this blew my mind. i used to drive an older car and when i upgraded to a 2018 model i thought i would have a CD changer and IF I WAS LUCKY a cassette deck along with my bluetooth. sadly i only have the bluetooth and it barely works sometimes.
A relative just got a new car and it didn’t have a cd player, I was shocked, they didn’t really care, but I feel like we won’t be able to stream forever, we’re going to need physical media.
1. Yup and we will have our CDs for that horrific time.
2. Things like song rights may cause problems, I’m no music lawyer professional, but something could happen along those lines.
You never owned your CD copy of Thriller. That music was actually owned by someone else. You just owned an officially licensed copy. Soo in that case, the artwork on vinyl is worth the pain of storage, flipping, etc…
You don’t own it, but you can display it as artwork. You can listen to it but you can’t put it on your blog soundtrack and post it to youtube.
If, since you don’t own it, all you can do is listen to it and display it as artwork, then lp’s are worth it if only for the size of the artwork.
CDs are awesome. I have a thousand of them. But you can’t really display them as artwork the same way.
A cassette player in a 2018 car ? I think there’s been a decade or more since the last cassette players where put in a car, I would say 2002-2003 maybe ?
I bought a 2015 model in 2018 because it still had a CD player, and was a manual.
Not a fan of new cars these days. Too many electronic features that can, and will, break.
Yup new ones are more computer than car. I like computers but I like them separate cars stay cars and computers stay as computers, same with phones, smartphones are just neutered computers with no freedom.
Most, an probably ALL new cars don't have CD players, I got a new car last year and it does not even have an Aux input jack, just bluetooth, Andriod Auto and Apple Car Play
It’s considered a “feature” now I had a 2019 Jetta SEL Premium… and it had a CD player as an extra.. but in was hidden in the glove box… I got rid of that piece of shit for a ‘17 Camry SE and it has a CD player front and center.. and I love it lol
Yeah they cheap out and don't include a CD player or even the option for one, makes you think about what critical drive train components they cheap out on if they can't even add buttons or a CD player.
I started selling my CD collection because my new Honda doesn’t have a CD player. Driving is pretty much the only time I would listen to CD’s. At home its vinyl or even streaming if I’m being lazy
I can see people who are into vinyl arguing about it. Vinyl can be a great listening experience if one spends the money on great gear and is diligent and meticulous in keeping the vinyl clean.
Cassettes, OTOH, I don't see that at all. When I was a kid I saw cassettes as a way to keep your vinyl pristine. I couldn't afford good, let alone great, equipment. I would buy an album, record it to cassette, and play the cassette. When that wore out I would repeat the process.
The only advantage I could see to cassettes over vinyl was that I could play a cassette in my car back in the 1980s.
CD just craps all over cassettes.
>great listening experience if one spends the money on great gear
I think we can say that about CDs too. If you have great gear, you can even listen streamed songs in very high quality. That plus the fact that you don't need that much space and conditioning for the CDs makes them superior to vinyl. The only better thing about vinyl is the bigger resolution of the artworks and lyrics sheets that come with it.
> I think we can say that about CDs too.
Maybe, but you don't need to spend as much to have a good experience. A cheap turntable with a cheap cartridge is going to give you less than a cheap DVD player plugged into the same amp playing through the same speakers.
In my case, I have a Fluance RT85 TT and an old Sony DVD player routed through an Aiyima DAC (via optical). Both are then routed through an old Pioneer receiver and a good pair of speakers.
There's a reason that I have a few hundred CDs and a couple of dozen LPs.
Regarding streaming, I cannot hear a difference between HD streaming and compact disc. I'm streaming through a WiiM Pro streamer and have an Amazon Music account.
>The only better thing about vinyl is the bigger resolution of the artworks and lyrics sheets that come with it.
I don't disagree. I pointed out that vinyl enthusiasts might argue about that, and they might have a point. I did a comparison between a brand new copy of DSotM on vinyl, a copy of it on CD (circa 1980s), and streaming. Vinyl lost, but not because of the sound quality. It lost because of the few static pops that I got even with a new copy. I did like getting up at the end of Great Gig In The Sky to flip the album, though. It made me nostalgic for days gone by.
As a person who had all three formats as an option as a kid, I would say all three are superior in their own way. CDs are definitely better than cassettes as far as convenience and consistent sound quality. I think people now also forget how horrible cd players used to be in the 80’s and early 90’s. My dad would put a cd on back then and the laser would randomly get stuck on one point of the song. They skipped all the time. Pre-recorded cassettes though sound great though a sound system. Most people are used to listening to tapes that were recorded over multiple times on crappy old car stereos, boom boxes or Walkmen. Records do sound great, but there is a decent amount of money and space that needs to be invested to enjoy that format. With the way prices are today, I could definitely see people being discouraged from starting a record collection. Overall CDs do make the most sense cost wise, but I have seen people with multi-thousand dollar cd players. I feel that defeats the purpose. I do own and collect for all three, so I don’t discriminate. I also have a small 8-track collection as well. There’s even a few albums that I have on all 4 formats. All of them sound good in their own way because they’re going through a good set of large speakers. The biggest mistake people make in my opinion is getting these wimpy small bookshelf speakers. If you want to hear and feel the music, you need large speakers.
Vinyl lets them set the tracking angle, the tone arm weight, the cartridge, and a dozen other settings which impact the sound.
What they don't realize is that with so many variables, they will never know if their sound is even close to what the artist wanted.
Your just missing one big thing. All non audio factors. Cassettes are so cool, the little case the machine...it's like a watch in there so many little wheels spinning and shit...it's cool.
With Vinyl you get this big ass disk and you get to hold it and it comes in this big ass envelope with big ass art on it. It's also really cool when the needle first hits and you get that Vinyl background static noise.....here we go!!!
CDs are kick ass because they are the future. I love how the tray slides out and I get to put in a little disc that's colored in the best color ever.....keep your pink Vinyl...all CDs are colored Mirror Rainbow....fuck off that is the best color ever.
CDs domsoind the best tho...if you care about that! :)
I agree with everything thing that u/Thangalby_Slapdiback said, except, I kind of liked how (home recorded) cassettes brought the sound down to FM radio level, at least to my ears listening on a Sony Walkman. Growing up listening to the radio, I guess I was used to a certain sound…or maybe it was all in my head. 🤷♂️ Also, MIX TAPES!!!
I understand where you're coming from. LPs hold a dear place in my heart. That's why I recently picked up a Fluance RT85 TT. It too is a unique listening experience, but I can't say that it's superior to CD in any way - convenience, sound quality, longevity. For me LPs are about nostalgia.
As you say, though, to each their own!
Technically I agree CDs have all the advantages. Easier to make, long-lasting and perfect for archiving, cheap, good players still being made, cases have room for booklets... and still, just like with my cheap Casio watch that beats my old mechanical wristwatch in every area, I use and like them both :)
I don't understand cassettes other than aesthetics (which are a fine reason to be into them imo). They sound worse and are more fragile. They do look pretty though.
It's funny you say that because cassette is also the best portable physical format and I often burn CD to tape so I can have it with me at work in a sport walkman. CD players are huge
I have to disagree there. I believe FLAC is superior to cassette in that regard. Ripping and encoding to FLAC (or ALAC for you Apple heads) takes no space at all when it comes to physical media. It offers a superior sound when compared to cassette. Your only limit is the amount of storage on your cell phone.
Granted, it's not a physical format. Still, if you're ripping from CD and encoding you started out with a physical format so there's no concern about licensing nonsense eliminating your music from a streaming platform. I also do not see the point in being married to a physical format that was never widely regarded as having equal sound quality as other popular media - at least since the 1990s.
You cannot make the argument that a Walkman is going to offer superior sound. It's only advantage was convenience in an era before digital music files. Modern ear buds - even the cheap ones - will sound as good as Walkman headphones. Good ear buds will sound much better. Also, with Bluetooth ear buds you won't have to deal with the cable between the Walkman and the headphones.
Yea the real meta to this shit is ripping your songs to your phone or mp3 player from the disc. High quality sound and you get the portability of a streaming user
Some folks have their own servers where they’re streaming their own music
Most of the common ones come equipped for movies and music “out of the box” so to speak. Plex or Jellyfin will have you set in either department immediately.
Plex is more user friendly but has subscription-model paid tier stuff, some bloat they try to push on you, and ties you to their servers for authentication.
Jellyfin is free and open source but can be a pain in the ass to set up to stream outside your home network. If you’ve got a bit of technological know-how, you can figure it out though.
Plex has more regular updates and features because it is a business in the interest of making money from you. Jellyfin is free, but volunteer maintained, so updates and features are slow to release and can be unpolished.
Depends on who you are and what your priorities are. I went with Jellyfin, fwiw
THIS! I rarely listen to any of my CDs as a CD, but I rip an MP3, FLAC, and ALAC copy to my computer with Asunder and iTunes, then listen on my PC, iPhone, Galaxy phone, AppleTV, Roku, etc. For me it's about 1. Having the highest quality audio (MP3s are only for last resort) and 2. owning a physical master copy I can come back to if I need to re-rip for some reason.
I guess I just don't want to do all that. Im a huge metal head and there are some tapes that the fade and distortion from time adds to the quality of the tape for me. I'm not kidding you I'm only 28 and I love tapes(I have a tape player in my truck) I do not love MP3 or flac and I guess it's because it isn't physical. I would always take vinyl,tapes or CD any day. Also the sound quality I would argue sound better to me over CD or vinyls. I love tape hiss and features like Dolby NR I like that tapes are still being made in Indonesia by Sony and Japan and I can still buy new tapes today. You are 100% right that flac is better on paper but as far as feelings. Tape and CD imo are the best there ever was!
We all have our perspectives. We all have our likes and our dislikes. If you love cassette more power to you. I hope that you have many years of enjoyment with them ahead of you.
What follows is not an indictment of you or your taste. Please understand that. It's just my take on it.
>I guess I just don't want to do all that.
You already are. You're copying from CD to cassette. That actually takes longer than ripping & encoding a CD to FLAC - or ALAC for that matter.
>Also the sound quality I would argue sound better to me over CD or vinyls. I love tape hiss and features like Dolby NR...
Far be it for me to tell you what you hear or what you should like, but I would like to make a point on this. To me, part of being an audio enthusiast (I feel weird about the term audiophile) is to try to get as clean a sound as possible. I want to hear the music. I don't want to hear anything but the music.
Tape hiss detracts from the experience for me. Hell, the only reason Dolby NR exists is to try to cut down on the tape hiss. That's why it was invented in the first place.
I like many genres. As I am an old guy I mainly like old guy music, though. It took me years, but I finally got a nice 2.0 system. Well, at least I think it's a nice system. I think most would agree.
Sometimes I listen to old jazz or classical recorded back in the day of analogue. Sometimes I can hear the tape hiss from the original master on the track/file I'm listening to. I find it a bit distracting but I ignore it. I figure that's just life when you like old music.
Tape hiss from my source, OTOH? Completely different story for me.
You're going to need to invest in good gear for a great listening experience for either vinyl or CD. But vinyl are more robust. CDs are disposable. The few CDs I have remaining that I've had for 25 years all skip at least somewhere and are beat to hell. R vinyl I've had that long still plays and sounds great.
If you want a great listening experience you'll need to invest something, sure. Good amplification and good speakers seldom come cheap. As far as investing goes, I have a Fluance RT85 TT ($500) and an old Sony DVD player ($25) that I'm routing (via TOSLINK) through a DAC into an old Pioneer receiver.
Out of curiosity, I did a comparison between a brand new copy of DSotM on vinyl vs. a nearly 40 year old copy I have on CD. I couldn't pick one as better than the other with regard to sound quality. The CD didn't have any static pops, though. It seems to me that when it comes to paying for a source you can get by spending much less for CD playback than with vinyl and end up with comparable sound quality.
CDs require less maintenance. Static buildup is not an issue. You don't need to brush the dust off of them. You don't need a sonic cleaner or a wet cleaner. All you need to do is be a bit careful about the playing surface. With error correction and oversampling built into players you can even have a few light surface scratches and it won't affect playback at all. Any scratch on vinyl will have an effect on playback.
I have many CDs that I bought in the 1980s that play and sound great. We're talking 35-40 years ago. I've only had problems with CDs skipping twice. One time the fault was a beat 35 year old Carver CD player that was tossed in with the Carver amp/preamp I bought at the time. The other was a copy of Joni Mitchell - Dog Eat Dog. That disc skipped when I bought it new in 1986.
If your CDs are beat to hell my question is, why? How did they get to be beat to hell? The only thing that is supposed to touch the playing surface of a CD is a beam of light and the surface of the tray you load it into. Those aren't going to scratch anything.
If I might make a suggestion:
Grab a few of the scratched up CDs that feature music that you love (tastes change, right?), drive them over to the local game shop, and ask them to polish up the surface. They have a machine in the game shops I've been in that will polish up the surface of the disc and remove all but the deepest scratches. That will probably address your skipping issues. If not, try them in another player. It could be that your player is the issue, not the discs themselves.
I mean it probably is the player, because the only way I have if playing CDs these days is a 17 year old Toyota lol. I'm not really worried about it because I feel the main strength of CDs (portability/ease of use) has been replaced for my purposes with streaming services. I also feel that same portability ends up being their downside. If I somehow lugged all my records around with me, threw them in the back of my car in a giant book, switched them out while driving, brought them over to friends houses, etc they would be in even worse shape than those remaining CDs. For physical media I just prefer vinyl personally, but those downsides of CDs aren't automatically inherent to the medium, but end up cropping up especially in the hands of teenagers because of how portable they are.
Even if you have the most expensive gear that money can buy, …IMO a CD just sounds better. Vinyl will always have noise that isn’t supposed to be there.
As someone who owns 2,000 Records, 100 tapes, and 0 CD but grew up in the prime CD era. He is my opinion…
CDs were great until MP3s showed up. They were more portable than vinyl, oftentimes sounded better than tapes plus no fast forwarding or rewinding necessary. The biggest issue with portability was that they skip… a lot.
In a digital age where CD quality (or better) music files exist, CDs are superfluous. (So are Cassettes too, BTW, though I still enjoy collecting them).
Sure, records are more inconvenient and take up more space but they are more aesthetically pleasing and ritualistic about listening to something that requires care and presence to to ideally enjoy and a truly all-analog record is a thing of beauty.
The reason I collect tapes is mainly due to cheapness. They are still physical media but are more portable, take up less space and are much cheaper (in most cases) than vinyl.
The reason I don’t collect CDs likely has to do with the proliferation of CD-R’s in the late 90s early 2000s. CDs were so cheap and meaningless, they were thought of as disposable and were treated without much care. It also made little sense to spend $18 on a CD when you could burn a copy for almost nothing. This cheapened the format for me.
I like vinyl myself simply for the whole experience, but you have to spend a fair ammount on equipment and you need to store them correctly to retain quality. Where as with cd they are; small easy to use and store, you dont need to spend as much on gear and the main thing for me is price vinyl these days is rediculous, you can buy an album on vinyl for like £30 and buy the cd for less than £10
Thank you! I don't understand why in this day in age you have to commit to just one format. I buy the albums I want on the first format I find them in. I will say, I have been buying brand new stuff on CDs recently. They are always cheaper. I just can justify spending $50+ on an album.
If they always mastered modern CDs they same way they did vinyl titles I'd be so happy. I'm really fed up with overly compressed and brickwalled music. I think it'd make a lot of people realize how good CDs can be.
Also I wish more bands would do like The Doors are doing and put out CD versions of their Record Store Day titles. I'm sure it's happened once or twice but the only other example I can think of is The Foo Fighters' Medium Rare comp.
Vinyl is mastered differently because when you cut vinyl it changes the tonality of the master physically. Mastering is a really simple idea that actually can be quite complex in the execution. A lot of the time you have to talk to the engineer and ask for digital streaming masters, CD masters, instrumental masters, TV/film masters, and vinyl masters separately. It’s easier for the engineer to do them all at the same session but in the end you get several different versions. Source I worked as a mix engineer on several albums that garnered radio play in the 2010s and generally sat in on masters when I was also getting a producer credit, so I’ve sat through at least a dozen mastering sessions at high level mastering houses.
I enjoy vinyl bc it's an inherently worse medium. I wish more people in vinyl groups realized that and got more joy out of trying to get the best sound out of it rather than trying to convince themselves that an analog chain somehow enhances the sound.
I will say it can sometimes sound better but that's typically up to the mix and not the actual qualities of vinyl. A good mix on both would sound pretty much the same but would be more prone to noise on an LP.
You need to be pragmatic about it. IMO the answer is collect and appreciate both.
CD is pretty much technically better in every way. Technically.
In reality for a given album the LP version can actually be better. It’s mostly just that vinyl forces a certain way of mastering. Crushed low dynamic range CD mastering is a production decision, not a technical limitation, but there are a lot of CD albums that had bad mastering.
Vinyl also draws people in because there’s a lot more opportunity for you to fix and tune things. CD is so reliable it doesn’t have any opportunities for someone to feel good about cleaning something, upgrading some little part, tuning something in the player, etc.. As a hobby you can make an argument that is satisfying.
It’s funny though really well produced classical CDs tend to exploit CDs dynamic range advantages over LPs whereas popular genres intentionally master CDs with lower range.
I was realizing that I only need 3 albums to have Coldplay’s entire catalog on CD. But I’ve long been able to hear almost their entire catalog has poor dynamics on digital formats. Love the music but I actually get annoyed with the mastering. I might actually buy some of the remaining ones on LP as a result.
Minidisc was the format that got away. At least here in the US, nobody knows what MDs are/were. But in the age of streaming, where having a physical format is all but lost, these are the little lost giants of the art of the mixtape.
I own 6 or 7 units of various SONY minidisc player/recorders and stream new music onto them as car mixtapes. All the virtues of CDs plus the ability to mix on demand due to in-device editing capabilities. My SONYs are pocket size Discman (around the size of a pack of cigarettes) models that can all record via optical, analog inputs, or via USB with open source software (unlike the days of dodgy “original “ software.
Pick one up on EBay and really become a master of mixing taping from one of the better streaming platforms (Tidal, Qobuz, or Band Camp). What you hear is what you get—-not “lossless”, but definitely better than tape and near-CD quality.
I got a NetMD right before the dawn of the iPod and defended it until the iPod nano. It was a great idea that just didn’t have the industry backing that iTunes had (which was admittedly minimal at that point in the iDevice life span)
Yes and no. Depends on how well it's mastered for both particular formats as many 90s to today's recordings via digital downloads and CDs are heavily brickwalled sounding while quite a few LPs will utilize more dynamic masters straight from the post-mixes. Of course, this is also contingent on how well they're pressed as well.
This. It's all about the quality of what's put on the medium. Crappy master on vinyl or 128/192 bit on CD. I've also had flimsy vinyl thinner than a CD as well as those three times as thick (doesn't guarantee quality sound, but usually is)
I love both, but used to prefer CDs for their portability and durability. Now I mostly stream when not in my living room and usually play vinyl on my stereo.
I think both are great, the high cost of vinyl in recent years though means when something Is released at £30 on vinyl and £10 on CD (or old releases that can be picked up for £2-3 on CD often) I go for the CD 80% of the time now as dont have much money
Not always - e.g. *Stadium Arcadium* by Red Hot Chili Peppers, I strongly prefer the mastering for vinyl over the CD.
It’s less about physical formats as it is about the mastering for most enjoyment.
As a kid and into my 20s I collected vinyl. I enjoyed the larger artwork. It was also very cool to get them signed by the bands. However, I rarely listened to them. I never cared for how they sounded. I sold off 99% of my record collection and it funded my IRA for a number of years.
I had a massive tape collection too. I listen to them, but every once in a while the tapes would get eaten and if you wanted to listen to a song over and over that was a pain. I got into CDs in 89/90 and havnt looked back.
CDs, it’s easier to take care of, easier to skip, rewind, fast forward, and it’s cheaper.
The only reason I collect vinyl is because it’s cool to have a plastic disc with music on it.
Part of the appeal of vinyl for me is that you can’t skip forward and I’ve discovered endless songs I would have otherwise skipped if it was on a different format
Eh, let people enjoy things. Vinyl and even cassettes have their upsides, so does CD and digital players. The upsides don't have to be sound quality, though cassettes aren't as bad as people tend to make them out to be. I just like the analog nature of it, digital is best for longevity, but there's always something intriguing to me about analog, that it's something physically moving past something else that generate the sound, it feels more natural, despite knowing that it's literally impossible to tell the difference between extremely high quality analog source and digital, save for analog having hiss.
It's the mastering, not the medium, that is important.
You can't hear Robert Ludwig's Led Zeppelin II on CD and you can't hear Barry Diament's Back in Black on vinyl.
Cost is key. I’ve been building CD and DVD libraries over the last few years, charity shops here in the UK are awash with them, it’s not uncommon to get five CDs for £1. We’ve built a media wall of 2000 dvd movies and watch about five a week, should be entertainment for years to come at a fraction of the cost of streaming apps. Total spend has been ~£500, I’ve had maybe £150 back already selling rarer finds on eBay, eg I picked up the Network release of Black Beauty tv series and sold it for £22, and I’m gradually selling off my ex rental VHS collection tape by tape, The Goonies went for £30 recently.
Im expecting to hit 500 CDs by the end of the year and have spent not much more than £150. That’s a lot of music for the cash. Crazy to think the original retail price for the dvd wall was 20k and I’ll have £5000 worth of cd albums for just £150. CDs are still massively undervalued on the used market, I’ve only sold a handful of rare rap albums for £10 each, most things won’t even sell on eBay for £1 right now. I’m confident that at some point the values will go up, I made a small fortune buying Megadrive, snes and PS1 games back in the early 00s then listing everything bit by bit in 2016 when we moved house, I wouldn’t be surprised if in years to come CDs get towards the £5 per album level - certainly things like the original 80s and 90s releases by classic bands
Objectivly, CDs are better than LPs or Cassetts, but subjectivly, they may not be.
Also, for about 20 years now, CDs have been mastered to be ripped to MP3 and listend to thru ear buds. Most LPs are not brickwalled like most CDs have been. and a whole lot of early CDs from the 80s were just taking from a Cassett or LP master tape, which can lead to the music sounding harsh since the masters were EQed to compesate for limitations of the final media.
The Golden age the CD was from 1989 to about 2002.
The best mastered music today is from the HiRes streaming sites and on LP. but it does seem that the CD mastering may be stepping back from the Loudness Wars
Better is a lazy adjective.
More convenient, yes.
Less destructive yes (audio always remains the same vis-a-vis an analogue medium).
Easier to store? I give cassettes an edge here. You cn toss a tape up and about without much worry, in comparison to vinyl/cd.
Better sounding - extremely subjective. Vinyl has a warmth factor that cannot be replicated (It can be but i mean naturally). Tape has that quaint hiss quality that IDK it gives a nice quality to some recordings (especially home recordings/mix tapes). CDs are true to the source but sound cold.
CD booklets got an edge on artwork imo.
As far as players and their serviciability (is that a word?) - tape decks and turn tables are rather easy to service for regular maintenance and small fixes... CD players have some mechanical serviciable partts, but once you get to the optic, it gets beyond the lay person.
Me honestly - I like all three for different reasons... tapes for mixes (burning a mix tape on CD while easy and effective, doesnt give the same end result), and I do like to switch sides, time goes by faster and flows better for some odd reason (CDs are too long, gets tiring in some situations). Vinyl is vinyl... Vinyl is drink in hand relaxing. CDs are great when wanting to listen full albums whilst doing chores or other activities, need not worry about the medium running out.
My very subjective two cents.
After listening to music on all sorts of media for years I am beginning to doubt the whole "warm" vs. "cold" sound thing. How is this even defined? The only difference to my ears is that vinyl records very often will have imperfections like dust that crackles and pops, but remove that and it's the same as the CD. But those crackles and pops aren't "warm", they are just... sounds. I highly suspect that what people actually mean is that the imperfect sound of a crackling record (and associated perceived nostalgia factor) gives them a warm and cozy feeling in their chest, not their ears.
I can describe personally as:
Warm - imperfect, crack and pops - medium adding to the end result sound.
Cold - too perfect, too quiet, vacuum. Digi.
Again it is an opinion, not science.
Yeah, I think we pretty much agree about the definition as it is generally used.
I guess I just find it weird as an argument for the "objective" superiority of vinyl as it is based on the sound actually being imperfect. I'm sure if you played a perfectly clean vinyl record with no artifacts in the sound, these people wouldn't be able to guess in a blind test if it was digital or not. I'm a big fan of cassette tapes myself, and it turns out that even with a semi decent recording on cheap type 1 tape, people are still surprised we're not listening to streaming music lol
But yeah I agree it's indeed not science
Hmmm, you had a bad player for them to be sounding underwater.
I've recently taped some flaccs I have of music which I had no physical medium of. Full albums... I do my own edits as far as track spacing and some fading if I need to squeeze in 1 minute or so (46 min album to fit in 45 side of 90 min tape).
It is not underwater. It sound nice. I do not use Dolby. And I am typing on a Pioneer C-F7272 or my Harman Kardon TD 292.
Blu-rays are actually more sensitive to abuse because of the higher density. The reason your PS4 discs took so much abuse yet still worked is because your console installed the game to your hard drive on first boot.
I have literally never scratched a DVD or Blu-Ray before. I’ve bought used DVDs with minor looking scratches but it wouldn’t play for crap even after buffing them out.
CD is generally better in terms of price, sound quality, and avaliablility of releases. A lot of albums that have been out of press on vinyl for decades are readily available on CD.
In terms of the tangible physical aspect, vinyl wins. The big 12-inch artwork, watching the album spin, the fact that it's actually physically pressed onto the record, everything feels a bit more "real" in a way. I think of CD as the midpoint between physical media and digital files.
I'll buy some releases on CD, but for albums that are important to me, I usually go for the vinyl.
A most pre-80’s albums in particular are better on vinyl! After that it comes down to production and flow of the album. For instance, Deftones Saturday Night Wrists is a “Vinyl album” for me, but Around the Fur is CD. The Smashing Pumpkins Adore is a CD album, but Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream are vinyl :)
Same!
People just like Vinyl for the aesthetics cause that's the less funtional method of hearing music.
It takes space
Only works in Vinyls players
The sound isn't even good
The disk are fragile
In compare to Cds, although, I have a soft spot for Cassette, even if those are even easier to break than Vinyl
Objectively CDs are better, in the sense that there are little to no limitations. You can put any master made for vinyl on CD but not the reverse.
I remember reading an interview of a long time engineer/producer, I forget who, but he did some big albums. He said that the difference in recording digitally vs analog is objectively better, if not perfect. Tape, vinyl had so many limitations that you couldn't always get the sound you wanted, plus the whole degradation aspect of the physical medium itself.
So I guess my point is that CD/digital is 100% objectively better than any analog medium. People may prefer vinyl, tape, or whatever. But it's not for the reason some think. You can make an "analog" sounding album digitally, but most artists don't because that's not how they want it to sound. There are so many audio effects that accurately reproduce tape and vinyl that anything is possible with digital and only keeps getting better with more software development. Amp sims are so good now that many artists don't use actual amps in the studio or live anymore.
Ive collect vinyl for the past 3ish years and still do but they are super expensive and I’m a broke college kid 😩 so I can only get about maybe one a month but recently started getting cds and it’s fun to get like 4 good cds for what you could get for one vinyl, still love vinyl but cds make it more available to have a physical copy of an album you love
Pros and cons for both for sure, but right now my focus is on CDs for the objectively better sound quality. If there’s an album I want with a great cover, I buy the vinyl and sometimes also the CD for the reason above. Also, vinyl prices are ridiculous now, I can get new CDs of the albums I parted ways with for under $10.
CDs are cheaper, more convenient, less fragile, and sound perfectly fine.
I’m not spending $30 more on a record for the sound quality to be 10% better and have it get scratched by slightly mishandling it so I can’t even play any of it anymore.
First pressings of CDs have younger masters and sound as good if not better than (clean) first pressings of records to me.
my vote goes to CDs as records I truly want have gotten really expensive. unavoidably, really.
Absolutely! (Owner of 2,050 CDs collecting for 40 years) To settle my FOMO for vinyl 2 years ago I bought a used but reconditioned Pioneer PL-4, Grado needle, using a NAD Phono Amp to my Yamaha / Mirage system. And I swear I tried to love vinyl again for weeks. I tried several LPs including a brand new Rush album but the ANNOYING background noises - hiss, tick, whatever. And the nostalgic allure of flipping a LP over to continue listening to the rest of the album was quickly lost.
That was and still is definitely the reason I love CD sound better than vinyl. I also appreciate that when there is quiet in the CD track it is actually *quiet*.
BTW - I gave the turntable setup to my father in law who is collecting early British rock LPs.
CDs are more convenient. I can hold them nicely/easily in my hand while looking at them. They're more solid. They store easier/better/safer; less likely to be damaged on that note. They're cheaper. As a collector, they are easier to find.
Yeah I have both, but find myself using the CD changer more often. I love collecting vinyl, but honestly listen to CD's way more because i can put on my CD changer and let 4 records go without having to stop and flip thing, put things away, wipe everything down.
I get its about the ritual, records are hard to use on purpose, its like grinding your own coffee.
I mainly buy CDs. They are, with some exceptions, much more affordable than vinyl these days. My car is a 2014 and has a CD player. I have ripped most of my CD collection to FLAC and I have a Hi-Res player with about 500 Gig of memory, so that's mainly what I listen to instead of the actual CDs lately. The only downside to CDs is how sensitive they are to damage. I mostly have good luck buying used CDs, but every so often I get a scratched one and it's a real bummer. I know, you can resurface them, but I don't have that equipment. Bit rot is another problem, however I rarely encounter it. Overall, I prefer CDs to vinyl.
I always understood bit rot was basically a problem on CDs from the 80s- when I had physical media I always kept CDs in a case and never had an issue with scratches except maybe 1 or 2
It isn't a common problem, but I come across a CD with rot a few times a year. I have a massive collection, spanning my entire basement and a storage unit (it's a sickness) and it's usually the earlier CDs that have this problem. It's not common, but it does happen.
My older brother bought a brand new 1971 Pontiac Firebird Trans AM. (The flaming red chicken he called it) And boys and girls: it came with a Blauplunkt 8 track player. Woooohooo! First time I heard Santana's first record on 8 track. Them the days. Remember the old guys in the neighbour checking it out saying, '8 track, air conditioning...boy you're riding in style' like a big shot'! ha ha
They’re both great in their own right. There’s no need to bash other fellow enjoyers of physical media. The only sides are Streaming vs Physical media. Personally I collect Vinyl, CDs, and tapes
I use vinyl, cd, and cassette
Vinyl sounds warmer to me and I like the sound, CD best quality sound on paper, cassette sounds worse but it’s fun to mess around with
Well you are probably going to get the answer you want from this sub.
But, yes, audio wise, it's obvious that they sound better in terms of clarity.
That said, I enjoy vinyl for the physical aspect that the audio is literally engrained into the format.
I'm a huge tape head but CD are definitely more accessible and affordable. I ruined my favorite dire straights album at the opening to money for nothing because the foam pad fell off and the tape rolled in the player. On the other hand I had a CD I found on the ground silver side down it was Korn life is peachy i took it and got it resurfaced for $1 and then listened to it 10 times and it still sounds great! I don't care for vinyl as much for personal collection however I do enjoy listening to anything on vinyl.
Way, way better. Vinyl?...warm my ass, more like snap, crackle, and pop. I guess people consider that warm. Don't even get me started on inner groove distortion. White noise garbage.
I listen to most of my collection on the phone these days, but the rips come from the CDs I buy. I've been through most of the formats as they've come and gone. Vinyl is a waste of space and criminally overpriced
Nobody thinks this.
That's why LPs were phased out. Then some millennial/gen z'er (I get them mixed up) who had never seen a vinyl record said "everything old is new again" and the vinyl fad began. It'll wind down eventually....then the CD fad will start.
There was always a small but vocal community who continued collecting vinyl. Even in the 90s and 2000s, where vinyl was at its lowest in terms of sales, albums were still pressed to vinyl in smaller quantities.
To say the vinyl resurgence is entirely based on people being unfamiliar with the format is just wrong. I think it's more related to the increasing reliance on streaming and digital files. People are sick of being sold digital files and subscriptions that don't actually amount to anything. Vinyl is basically the complete antithesis of this concept. It's physical to the point that it can be inconvenient.
I don't think there'll ever be a huge CD resurgence because CDs don't have that tangibility. Sure, you get the artwork, but it's really just a way to get files from point A to point B and playback those files. Vinyl is super tangible, almost to a fault, which is an issue people miss having.
Just my theory. I honestly think the vinyl resurgence is a side effect of the decreasing tangibility of our purchases. People want to actually own the shit that they pay for. Owning CDs is still owning the music, but it's stuck in the midpoint between physical mediums and digital, which is what people are trying to get away from.
Agree. But when? I work in the record industry and the "vinyl resurgence" is laughable at best. The fact that people call records "vinyl" or worse "vinyls" just proves my point about the fetish.No one calls CDs Polycarbonates.
CDs are more convenient and more durable. Plus I can easily rip a CD to put on my computer and smartphone.
What I don't like CDs and digital formats, but kinda like about vinyl is that the Loudness Wars have made some CDs just bad. Dialing the compression down a notch for mastering to vinyl lets some arrangements breath more.
I have CDs and vinyl, lots of both. It's a case-by-case basis. Lots of early masters on CD sound terrible, and lots of newer vinyl reissues fail to justify their existence. Certain vinyl pressings (esp of analog recordings) will be the best example of the material at hand, while CD is the way to go for lots of digital recordings. Vinyl was easier to justify buying when it was dirt cheap, and I hope CDs don't keep following the same trajectory that vinyl has.
In short: CDs are more practical, and have a better chance of sounding better, but certainly aren't the way to go 100% of the time.
I love vinyl, but I'm 23 years old so I grew up with cd's so they're more notalgic for me. Also collecting cd's is a way cheaper hobby than collecting vinyls.
I am looking into starting to collect cassette tapes as well, I think they look cool but that's about all I know about them lol
The cd sounds good almost anywhere while for vinyl to sound better you need to invest a lot, there are vinyls that sound incredible with the right equipment and sometimes having all that investment, a bad impression or recording on vinyl sounds terrible, the CD is practical As many here say, you can carry it in your car even if it is a new one, in some way you can get a discman with a transmitter or for personal use with headphones, the CD reaches more places than the vinyl and at this moment you can still find it at a good price.
Nobody likes vinyls because they're good, they like them because they're aesthetic.
They're large, sound horrible, and the cardboard sleeves are horrible compared to jewel cases. There's obviously a reason they got replaced by better mediums.
Yes. I'm half streaming half owning. I still collect music for mp3 because it can disappear from streaming any time also It can gives me more customize options like pitch changer and genre tag organize. cd is easy to convert to mp3. also it's easy to store. cd is way more cheaper than vinyl that's the win. I'm not rich at all. I just compared college dropout by kanye west. vinyl is +15 usd. I can buy another brand new cd with 15 usd. used vinyl is expensive too. I'm broke. I'm not "audiophile". I won't pay extra money for BIG album art.
Personally, no. vinyl is the superior medium to me, between the fidelity, extra artwork of a gatefold, posters and booklets crammed into the sleeves, its just my preferef way of enjoying music especially when on a low mushroom dose or high edible dose. however I love CD's for ease and cost effectiveness for collecting. I rarely find good records at the thrift, CD's are $1 a piece there
It’s been ‘proven’ many times over, that vinyl offers a better reproduction of the original source. I have versions of favourite albums on both formats, and can hear a difference in the articulation/separation of vocals/instrumentation - but it is not consistent, and vinyl that is grubby or dusty will ruin the translation of audio.
However, speaking from experience, the quality of your turntable, power supply, interconnects, amplifier, speaker cable, speakers, speaker mounts, and room acoustics all play a part in achieving the best possible output. CDs may be more forgiving than vinyl, but will still be improved by a good player, interconnects, amplifier, etc. It can get expensive, but good choices can keep the costs manageable…
Well, since the 80s, music has been produced completely digitally. Analog instruments are converted with high-quality A/D converters at least in 24 bit/192 kHz, digitally recorded, digitally pimped with effects, voices autotuned, digitally mixed, digitally mastered. In the end, everything is converted back via D/A and pressed onto the analog medium vinyl. If you then compare the signal of the D/A converter with the signal of the record on the best and most expensive turntable and preamp, you will definitely notice a loss.
Recordings from the "good, old analog time" have been stored digitally at the labels for a long time, if only because the original tapes decompose even with the most elaborate storage.
Technically, only records are produced purely analog before the 80s. And the difference in sound quality is probably unmistakable…bad.
So at the end, „better Vinyl Sound“ is from my perspective only religion, meanwhile big business and voodoo 🤷🏻♂️
Edit: Biggest advantage of vinyl is the cover. So music is „physical“ for consumers again, compared with smaller CD and streaming.
But at the end, real lossless streaming with 24 Bit/192 kHz beats vinyl from reproduction perspective.
Back to business perspective: Mastering differs between the planned output medium: vinyl, CD, streaming. This is the whole trick to keep the discussion between vinyl, CD and streaming alive... so that consumers listen to the songs via stream on the go, and still invest in vinyl or CD because of the „better sound“… and feel better depending on the religion.
It’s a complicated world…🙄
Why stop at the 80’s? In the 60’s and 70’s tape was king of recording, with engineers complaining about the lack of warmth from tape compression when digital recording took over. That tape compression is high frequency roll off. It makes the (specious) arguments about sampling rates irrelevant.
To me the biggest difference is that, because vinyl is a physical medium with limits in the physical world, it is impossible to brickwall a vinyl record.
If someone says a digitally recorded album sounds better on vinyl it’s because they did a specific master for vinyl that isn’t brickwalled.
CDs are excellent. I love their durability, portability & always accurate audio reproduction. However, when record producers manipulate the audio to sound like shit (see: loudness wars) perfect audio reproduction becomes a flaw, not a benefit.
Obviously Vinyl is gonna sound a bit better but CDs sound a lot better than streaming and are incredibly convenient. Easy to use, sound great, lots of support, and easy to make mixtapes/playlists on blank ones.
I love both but if it’s an album I love, I’ll get it on vinyl.
Why limit yourself to one medium? They’re both great
Also, vinyl is usually mastered from higher quality sources than CD.
This doesn’t stop me from buying CDs though, because they’re both fantastic mediums.
And hey, at least we aren’t on Spotify 🤮
Many cds are super compressed and sound like total shit ! Cds with high bit rates and 5.1 mixes are amazing but the common cd usually doesnt meet a high standard . Vinyl sounds great in a good system and certainly has its placee especially for those who still see albums for what they are , complete works of art (album covers) booklets , etc .
I think CD Collectors and Vinyl collectors are both after different things. Thats what makes it so perfect for each. I feel like sound wise I really can’t say though because I don’t have a good cd player or sound system for it.
Can't put vinyl on in the car. Also, you have to turn vinyl over part way through an album. Annoying! So, yeah, CDs are better.
Lots of cars nowadays don’t have CD players, sadly.
this blew my mind. i used to drive an older car and when i upgraded to a 2018 model i thought i would have a CD changer and IF I WAS LUCKY a cassette deck along with my bluetooth. sadly i only have the bluetooth and it barely works sometimes.
A relative just got a new car and it didn’t have a cd player, I was shocked, they didn’t really care, but I feel like we won’t be able to stream forever, we’re going to need physical media.
If streaming goes away that would mean the internet would be down and if that’s the case something horrible will have happened.
1. Yup and we will have our CDs for that horrific time. 2. Things like song rights may cause problems, I’m no music lawyer professional, but something could happen along those lines.
It seems like the world is becoming a rent everything instead of own model. I worry about not being find and listen or watch what I want, when I want.
You never owned your CD copy of Thriller. That music was actually owned by someone else. You just owned an officially licensed copy. Soo in that case, the artwork on vinyl is worth the pain of storage, flipping, etc…
How is an LP any different than a CD in terms of “ownership?” I don’t own any CDs that need to be “authorized” to play.
You don’t own it, but you can display it as artwork. You can listen to it but you can’t put it on your blog soundtrack and post it to youtube. If, since you don’t own it, all you can do is listen to it and display it as artwork, then lp’s are worth it if only for the size of the artwork. CDs are awesome. I have a thousand of them. But you can’t really display them as artwork the same way.
A cassette player in a 2018 car ? I think there’s been a decade or more since the last cassette players where put in a car, I would say 2002-2003 maybe ?
I bought a 2015 model in 2018 because it still had a CD player, and was a manual. Not a fan of new cars these days. Too many electronic features that can, and will, break.
Yup new ones are more computer than car. I like computers but I like them separate cars stay cars and computers stay as computers, same with phones, smartphones are just neutered computers with no freedom.
Exactly.
Most, an probably ALL new cars don't have CD players, I got a new car last year and it does not even have an Aux input jack, just bluetooth, Andriod Auto and Apple Car Play
It’s considered a “feature” now I had a 2019 Jetta SEL Premium… and it had a CD player as an extra.. but in was hidden in the glove box… I got rid of that piece of shit for a ‘17 Camry SE and it has a CD player front and center.. and I love it lol
Yeah they cheap out and don't include a CD player or even the option for one, makes you think about what critical drive train components they cheap out on if they can't even add buttons or a CD player.
Probably has a USB port hidden somewhere too
makes you wonder what else they cheap out on...
You ever seen the boom box record player? XD
I started selling my CD collection because my new Honda doesn’t have a CD player. Driving is pretty much the only time I would listen to CD’s. At home its vinyl or even streaming if I’m being lazy
So sad that new cars don't have CD players. Luckily I don't drive a new car, so my CDs are heavily rotated.
Everyone here thinks that. Now go to /r/vinyl and /r/cassetteculture and see what they say.
I can see people who are into vinyl arguing about it. Vinyl can be a great listening experience if one spends the money on great gear and is diligent and meticulous in keeping the vinyl clean. Cassettes, OTOH, I don't see that at all. When I was a kid I saw cassettes as a way to keep your vinyl pristine. I couldn't afford good, let alone great, equipment. I would buy an album, record it to cassette, and play the cassette. When that wore out I would repeat the process. The only advantage I could see to cassettes over vinyl was that I could play a cassette in my car back in the 1980s. CD just craps all over cassettes.
>great listening experience if one spends the money on great gear I think we can say that about CDs too. If you have great gear, you can even listen streamed songs in very high quality. That plus the fact that you don't need that much space and conditioning for the CDs makes them superior to vinyl. The only better thing about vinyl is the bigger resolution of the artworks and lyrics sheets that come with it.
> I think we can say that about CDs too. Maybe, but you don't need to spend as much to have a good experience. A cheap turntable with a cheap cartridge is going to give you less than a cheap DVD player plugged into the same amp playing through the same speakers. In my case, I have a Fluance RT85 TT and an old Sony DVD player routed through an Aiyima DAC (via optical). Both are then routed through an old Pioneer receiver and a good pair of speakers. There's a reason that I have a few hundred CDs and a couple of dozen LPs. Regarding streaming, I cannot hear a difference between HD streaming and compact disc. I'm streaming through a WiiM Pro streamer and have an Amazon Music account. >The only better thing about vinyl is the bigger resolution of the artworks and lyrics sheets that come with it. I don't disagree. I pointed out that vinyl enthusiasts might argue about that, and they might have a point. I did a comparison between a brand new copy of DSotM on vinyl, a copy of it on CD (circa 1980s), and streaming. Vinyl lost, but not because of the sound quality. It lost because of the few static pops that I got even with a new copy. I did like getting up at the end of Great Gig In The Sky to flip the album, though. It made me nostalgic for days gone by.
As a person who had all three formats as an option as a kid, I would say all three are superior in their own way. CDs are definitely better than cassettes as far as convenience and consistent sound quality. I think people now also forget how horrible cd players used to be in the 80’s and early 90’s. My dad would put a cd on back then and the laser would randomly get stuck on one point of the song. They skipped all the time. Pre-recorded cassettes though sound great though a sound system. Most people are used to listening to tapes that were recorded over multiple times on crappy old car stereos, boom boxes or Walkmen. Records do sound great, but there is a decent amount of money and space that needs to be invested to enjoy that format. With the way prices are today, I could definitely see people being discouraged from starting a record collection. Overall CDs do make the most sense cost wise, but I have seen people with multi-thousand dollar cd players. I feel that defeats the purpose. I do own and collect for all three, so I don’t discriminate. I also have a small 8-track collection as well. There’s even a few albums that I have on all 4 formats. All of them sound good in their own way because they’re going through a good set of large speakers. The biggest mistake people make in my opinion is getting these wimpy small bookshelf speakers. If you want to hear and feel the music, you need large speakers.
Vinyl lets them set the tracking angle, the tone arm weight, the cartridge, and a dozen other settings which impact the sound. What they don't realize is that with so many variables, they will never know if their sound is even close to what the artist wanted.
How are cds possibly better than cassettes?!?!? You don't even get to stop and rewind a cd for a few minutes when you want to hear a song again
Your just missing one big thing. All non audio factors. Cassettes are so cool, the little case the machine...it's like a watch in there so many little wheels spinning and shit...it's cool. With Vinyl you get this big ass disk and you get to hold it and it comes in this big ass envelope with big ass art on it. It's also really cool when the needle first hits and you get that Vinyl background static noise.....here we go!!! CDs are kick ass because they are the future. I love how the tray slides out and I get to put in a little disc that's colored in the best color ever.....keep your pink Vinyl...all CDs are colored Mirror Rainbow....fuck off that is the best color ever. CDs domsoind the best tho...if you care about that! :)
Hmm, cassettes still hold a very dear place in my heart. And with proper equipment it's still a unique listening experience. But to each their own!
I agree with everything thing that u/Thangalby_Slapdiback said, except, I kind of liked how (home recorded) cassettes brought the sound down to FM radio level, at least to my ears listening on a Sony Walkman. Growing up listening to the radio, I guess I was used to a certain sound…or maybe it was all in my head. 🤷♂️ Also, MIX TAPES!!!
I understand where you're coming from. LPs hold a dear place in my heart. That's why I recently picked up a Fluance RT85 TT. It too is a unique listening experience, but I can't say that it's superior to CD in any way - convenience, sound quality, longevity. For me LPs are about nostalgia. As you say, though, to each their own!
Technically I agree CDs have all the advantages. Easier to make, long-lasting and perfect for archiving, cheap, good players still being made, cases have room for booklets... and still, just like with my cheap Casio watch that beats my old mechanical wristwatch in every area, I use and like them both :)
I don't understand cassettes other than aesthetics (which are a fine reason to be into them imo). They sound worse and are more fragile. They do look pretty though.
It's funny you say that because cassette is also the best portable physical format and I often burn CD to tape so I can have it with me at work in a sport walkman. CD players are huge
Wait till you find out about minidiscs. Your mind is going to explode.
I have to disagree there. I believe FLAC is superior to cassette in that regard. Ripping and encoding to FLAC (or ALAC for you Apple heads) takes no space at all when it comes to physical media. It offers a superior sound when compared to cassette. Your only limit is the amount of storage on your cell phone. Granted, it's not a physical format. Still, if you're ripping from CD and encoding you started out with a physical format so there's no concern about licensing nonsense eliminating your music from a streaming platform. I also do not see the point in being married to a physical format that was never widely regarded as having equal sound quality as other popular media - at least since the 1990s. You cannot make the argument that a Walkman is going to offer superior sound. It's only advantage was convenience in an era before digital music files. Modern ear buds - even the cheap ones - will sound as good as Walkman headphones. Good ear buds will sound much better. Also, with Bluetooth ear buds you won't have to deal with the cable between the Walkman and the headphones.
Yea the real meta to this shit is ripping your songs to your phone or mp3 player from the disc. High quality sound and you get the portability of a streaming user Some folks have their own servers where they’re streaming their own music
Currently one of these folks as I’m browsing Reddit, listening to Saint Dominic’s Preview off my media server
I think I wanna set one up once I get more CDs, could I make one for movies?
Most of the common ones come equipped for movies and music “out of the box” so to speak. Plex or Jellyfin will have you set in either department immediately. Plex is more user friendly but has subscription-model paid tier stuff, some bloat they try to push on you, and ties you to their servers for authentication. Jellyfin is free and open source but can be a pain in the ass to set up to stream outside your home network. If you’ve got a bit of technological know-how, you can figure it out though. Plex has more regular updates and features because it is a business in the interest of making money from you. Jellyfin is free, but volunteer maintained, so updates and features are slow to release and can be unpolished. Depends on who you are and what your priorities are. I went with Jellyfin, fwiw
THIS! I rarely listen to any of my CDs as a CD, but I rip an MP3, FLAC, and ALAC copy to my computer with Asunder and iTunes, then listen on my PC, iPhone, Galaxy phone, AppleTV, Roku, etc. For me it's about 1. Having the highest quality audio (MP3s are only for last resort) and 2. owning a physical master copy I can come back to if I need to re-rip for some reason.
I guess I just don't want to do all that. Im a huge metal head and there are some tapes that the fade and distortion from time adds to the quality of the tape for me. I'm not kidding you I'm only 28 and I love tapes(I have a tape player in my truck) I do not love MP3 or flac and I guess it's because it isn't physical. I would always take vinyl,tapes or CD any day. Also the sound quality I would argue sound better to me over CD or vinyls. I love tape hiss and features like Dolby NR I like that tapes are still being made in Indonesia by Sony and Japan and I can still buy new tapes today. You are 100% right that flac is better on paper but as far as feelings. Tape and CD imo are the best there ever was!
We all have our perspectives. We all have our likes and our dislikes. If you love cassette more power to you. I hope that you have many years of enjoyment with them ahead of you. What follows is not an indictment of you or your taste. Please understand that. It's just my take on it. >I guess I just don't want to do all that. You already are. You're copying from CD to cassette. That actually takes longer than ripping & encoding a CD to FLAC - or ALAC for that matter. >Also the sound quality I would argue sound better to me over CD or vinyls. I love tape hiss and features like Dolby NR... Far be it for me to tell you what you hear or what you should like, but I would like to make a point on this. To me, part of being an audio enthusiast (I feel weird about the term audiophile) is to try to get as clean a sound as possible. I want to hear the music. I don't want to hear anything but the music. Tape hiss detracts from the experience for me. Hell, the only reason Dolby NR exists is to try to cut down on the tape hiss. That's why it was invented in the first place. I like many genres. As I am an old guy I mainly like old guy music, though. It took me years, but I finally got a nice 2.0 system. Well, at least I think it's a nice system. I think most would agree. Sometimes I listen to old jazz or classical recorded back in the day of analogue. Sometimes I can hear the tape hiss from the original master on the track/file I'm listening to. I find it a bit distracting but I ignore it. I figure that's just life when you like old music. Tape hiss from my source, OTOH? Completely different story for me.
You're going to need to invest in good gear for a great listening experience for either vinyl or CD. But vinyl are more robust. CDs are disposable. The few CDs I have remaining that I've had for 25 years all skip at least somewhere and are beat to hell. R vinyl I've had that long still plays and sounds great.
If you want a great listening experience you'll need to invest something, sure. Good amplification and good speakers seldom come cheap. As far as investing goes, I have a Fluance RT85 TT ($500) and an old Sony DVD player ($25) that I'm routing (via TOSLINK) through a DAC into an old Pioneer receiver. Out of curiosity, I did a comparison between a brand new copy of DSotM on vinyl vs. a nearly 40 year old copy I have on CD. I couldn't pick one as better than the other with regard to sound quality. The CD didn't have any static pops, though. It seems to me that when it comes to paying for a source you can get by spending much less for CD playback than with vinyl and end up with comparable sound quality. CDs require less maintenance. Static buildup is not an issue. You don't need to brush the dust off of them. You don't need a sonic cleaner or a wet cleaner. All you need to do is be a bit careful about the playing surface. With error correction and oversampling built into players you can even have a few light surface scratches and it won't affect playback at all. Any scratch on vinyl will have an effect on playback. I have many CDs that I bought in the 1980s that play and sound great. We're talking 35-40 years ago. I've only had problems with CDs skipping twice. One time the fault was a beat 35 year old Carver CD player that was tossed in with the Carver amp/preamp I bought at the time. The other was a copy of Joni Mitchell - Dog Eat Dog. That disc skipped when I bought it new in 1986. If your CDs are beat to hell my question is, why? How did they get to be beat to hell? The only thing that is supposed to touch the playing surface of a CD is a beam of light and the surface of the tray you load it into. Those aren't going to scratch anything. If I might make a suggestion: Grab a few of the scratched up CDs that feature music that you love (tastes change, right?), drive them over to the local game shop, and ask them to polish up the surface. They have a machine in the game shops I've been in that will polish up the surface of the disc and remove all but the deepest scratches. That will probably address your skipping issues. If not, try them in another player. It could be that your player is the issue, not the discs themselves.
I mean it probably is the player, because the only way I have if playing CDs these days is a 17 year old Toyota lol. I'm not really worried about it because I feel the main strength of CDs (portability/ease of use) has been replaced for my purposes with streaming services. I also feel that same portability ends up being their downside. If I somehow lugged all my records around with me, threw them in the back of my car in a giant book, switched them out while driving, brought them over to friends houses, etc they would be in even worse shape than those remaining CDs. For physical media I just prefer vinyl personally, but those downsides of CDs aren't automatically inherent to the medium, but end up cropping up especially in the hands of teenagers because of how portable they are.
Even if you have the most expensive gear that money can buy, …IMO a CD just sounds better. Vinyl will always have noise that isn’t supposed to be there.
As someone who owns 2,000 Records, 100 tapes, and 0 CD but grew up in the prime CD era. He is my opinion… CDs were great until MP3s showed up. They were more portable than vinyl, oftentimes sounded better than tapes plus no fast forwarding or rewinding necessary. The biggest issue with portability was that they skip… a lot. In a digital age where CD quality (or better) music files exist, CDs are superfluous. (So are Cassettes too, BTW, though I still enjoy collecting them). Sure, records are more inconvenient and take up more space but they are more aesthetically pleasing and ritualistic about listening to something that requires care and presence to to ideally enjoy and a truly all-analog record is a thing of beauty. The reason I collect tapes is mainly due to cheapness. They are still physical media but are more portable, take up less space and are much cheaper (in most cases) than vinyl. The reason I don’t collect CDs likely has to do with the proliferation of CD-R’s in the late 90s early 2000s. CDs were so cheap and meaningless, they were thought of as disposable and were treated without much care. It also made little sense to spend $18 on a CD when you could burn a copy for almost nothing. This cheapened the format for me.
Hahaha
I like vinyl myself simply for the whole experience, but you have to spend a fair ammount on equipment and you need to store them correctly to retain quality. Where as with cd they are; small easy to use and store, you dont need to spend as much on gear and the main thing for me is price vinyl these days is rediculous, you can buy an album on vinyl for like £30 and buy the cd for less than £10
This is so true. I have so many scratched up CDs that play great. And I have kept most in CD books for years no issues.
I collect cds, vinyl,and cassettes, they’re all fun.
Thank you! I don't understand why in this day in age you have to commit to just one format. I buy the albums I want on the first format I find them in. I will say, I have been buying brand new stuff on CDs recently. They are always cheaper. I just can justify spending $50+ on an album.
Reel-to-reel too! I'll be honest I haven't the funds to really delve into that very far but I have a nice deck and a few retail tapes.
If they always mastered modern CDs they same way they did vinyl titles I'd be so happy. I'm really fed up with overly compressed and brickwalled music. I think it'd make a lot of people realize how good CDs can be. Also I wish more bands would do like The Doors are doing and put out CD versions of their Record Store Day titles. I'm sure it's happened once or twice but the only other example I can think of is The Foo Fighters' Medium Rare comp.
Oh don’t worry. That’s coming
Vinyl is mastered differently because when you cut vinyl it changes the tonality of the master physically. Mastering is a really simple idea that actually can be quite complex in the execution. A lot of the time you have to talk to the engineer and ask for digital streaming masters, CD masters, instrumental masters, TV/film masters, and vinyl masters separately. It’s easier for the engineer to do them all at the same session but in the end you get several different versions. Source I worked as a mix engineer on several albums that garnered radio play in the 2010s and generally sat in on masters when I was also getting a producer credit, so I’ve sat through at least a dozen mastering sessions at high level mastering houses.
I enjoy vinyl bc it's an inherently worse medium. I wish more people in vinyl groups realized that and got more joy out of trying to get the best sound out of it rather than trying to convince themselves that an analog chain somehow enhances the sound. I will say it can sometimes sound better but that's typically up to the mix and not the actual qualities of vinyl. A good mix on both would sound pretty much the same but would be more prone to noise on an LP.
The mix, yep! Bypassing that loudness war from the 80s on CD.
Only department vinyl wins is size for the artwork and the funky colours you can get vinyl in.
You need to be pragmatic about it. IMO the answer is collect and appreciate both. CD is pretty much technically better in every way. Technically. In reality for a given album the LP version can actually be better. It’s mostly just that vinyl forces a certain way of mastering. Crushed low dynamic range CD mastering is a production decision, not a technical limitation, but there are a lot of CD albums that had bad mastering. Vinyl also draws people in because there’s a lot more opportunity for you to fix and tune things. CD is so reliable it doesn’t have any opportunities for someone to feel good about cleaning something, upgrading some little part, tuning something in the player, etc.. As a hobby you can make an argument that is satisfying. It’s funny though really well produced classical CDs tend to exploit CDs dynamic range advantages over LPs whereas popular genres intentionally master CDs with lower range. I was realizing that I only need 3 albums to have Coldplay’s entire catalog on CD. But I’ve long been able to hear almost their entire catalog has poor dynamics on digital formats. Love the music but I actually get annoyed with the mastering. I might actually buy some of the remaining ones on LP as a result.
Minidisc was the format that got away. At least here in the US, nobody knows what MDs are/were. But in the age of streaming, where having a physical format is all but lost, these are the little lost giants of the art of the mixtape. I own 6 or 7 units of various SONY minidisc player/recorders and stream new music onto them as car mixtapes. All the virtues of CDs plus the ability to mix on demand due to in-device editing capabilities. My SONYs are pocket size Discman (around the size of a pack of cigarettes) models that can all record via optical, analog inputs, or via USB with open source software (unlike the days of dodgy “original “ software. Pick one up on EBay and really become a master of mixing taping from one of the better streaming platforms (Tidal, Qobuz, or Band Camp). What you hear is what you get—-not “lossless”, but definitely better than tape and near-CD quality.
they are getting to be crazy expensive now.
I got a NetMD right before the dawn of the iPod and defended it until the iPod nano. It was a great idea that just didn’t have the industry backing that iTunes had (which was admittedly minimal at that point in the iDevice life span)
I can see the appeal of vinyl withe big disc, but cds are just better digital and better sound
Yes and no. Depends on how well it's mastered for both particular formats as many 90s to today's recordings via digital downloads and CDs are heavily brickwalled sounding while quite a few LPs will utilize more dynamic masters straight from the post-mixes. Of course, this is also contingent on how well they're pressed as well.
This. It's all about the quality of what's put on the medium. Crappy master on vinyl or 128/192 bit on CD. I've also had flimsy vinyl thinner than a CD as well as those three times as thick (doesn't guarantee quality sound, but usually is)
I love both, but used to prefer CDs for their portability and durability. Now I mostly stream when not in my living room and usually play vinyl on my stereo.
I think both are great, the high cost of vinyl in recent years though means when something Is released at £30 on vinyl and £10 on CD (or old releases that can be picked up for £2-3 on CD often) I go for the CD 80% of the time now as dont have much money
Not always - e.g. *Stadium Arcadium* by Red Hot Chili Peppers, I strongly prefer the mastering for vinyl over the CD. It’s less about physical formats as it is about the mastering for most enjoyment.
As a kid and into my 20s I collected vinyl. I enjoyed the larger artwork. It was also very cool to get them signed by the bands. However, I rarely listened to them. I never cared for how they sounded. I sold off 99% of my record collection and it funded my IRA for a number of years. I had a massive tape collection too. I listen to them, but every once in a while the tapes would get eaten and if you wanted to listen to a song over and over that was a pain. I got into CDs in 89/90 and havnt looked back.
You are correct.
I got rid of my turntable and LP's in the early 90's and never looked back. If vinyl is someone's passion, more power to them. I like my CD's.
CDs, it’s easier to take care of, easier to skip, rewind, fast forward, and it’s cheaper. The only reason I collect vinyl is because it’s cool to have a plastic disc with music on it.
Part of the appeal of vinyl for me is that you can’t skip forward and I’ve discovered endless songs I would have otherwise skipped if it was on a different format
All comes to decisions of mastering after all...
That classical musicians, producers, labels, and listeners embraced CD/digital when it came out, to me, is a testament of its superiority over vinyl.
Eh, let people enjoy things. Vinyl and even cassettes have their upsides, so does CD and digital players. The upsides don't have to be sound quality, though cassettes aren't as bad as people tend to make them out to be. I just like the analog nature of it, digital is best for longevity, but there's always something intriguing to me about analog, that it's something physically moving past something else that generate the sound, it feels more natural, despite knowing that it's literally impossible to tell the difference between extremely high quality analog source and digital, save for analog having hiss.
They are a lot more stable in the car.
Cd quality is far superior to vinyl
It's the mastering, not the medium, that is important. You can't hear Robert Ludwig's Led Zeppelin II on CD and you can't hear Barry Diament's Back in Black on vinyl.
Yes, only because they take up less space, aren't that expensive and don't break as easily
Cost is key. I’ve been building CD and DVD libraries over the last few years, charity shops here in the UK are awash with them, it’s not uncommon to get five CDs for £1. We’ve built a media wall of 2000 dvd movies and watch about five a week, should be entertainment for years to come at a fraction of the cost of streaming apps. Total spend has been ~£500, I’ve had maybe £150 back already selling rarer finds on eBay, eg I picked up the Network release of Black Beauty tv series and sold it for £22, and I’m gradually selling off my ex rental VHS collection tape by tape, The Goonies went for £30 recently. Im expecting to hit 500 CDs by the end of the year and have spent not much more than £150. That’s a lot of music for the cash. Crazy to think the original retail price for the dvd wall was 20k and I’ll have £5000 worth of cd albums for just £150. CDs are still massively undervalued on the used market, I’ve only sold a handful of rare rap albums for £10 each, most things won’t even sell on eBay for £1 right now. I’m confident that at some point the values will go up, I made a small fortune buying Megadrive, snes and PS1 games back in the early 00s then listing everything bit by bit in 2016 when we moved house, I wouldn’t be surprised if in years to come CDs get towards the £5 per album level - certainly things like the original 80s and 90s releases by classic bands
Yeah if I buy something in golden discs in Ireland, it's usually like 10 or 8 per cd or 20 for 3
Golden era of CD collecting for sure!
Objectivly, CDs are better than LPs or Cassetts, but subjectivly, they may not be. Also, for about 20 years now, CDs have been mastered to be ripped to MP3 and listend to thru ear buds. Most LPs are not brickwalled like most CDs have been. and a whole lot of early CDs from the 80s were just taking from a Cassett or LP master tape, which can lead to the music sounding harsh since the masters were EQed to compesate for limitations of the final media. The Golden age the CD was from 1989 to about 2002. The best mastered music today is from the HiRes streaming sites and on LP. but it does seem that the CD mastering may be stepping back from the Loudness Wars
This 100%
Better is a lazy adjective. More convenient, yes. Less destructive yes (audio always remains the same vis-a-vis an analogue medium). Easier to store? I give cassettes an edge here. You cn toss a tape up and about without much worry, in comparison to vinyl/cd. Better sounding - extremely subjective. Vinyl has a warmth factor that cannot be replicated (It can be but i mean naturally). Tape has that quaint hiss quality that IDK it gives a nice quality to some recordings (especially home recordings/mix tapes). CDs are true to the source but sound cold. CD booklets got an edge on artwork imo. As far as players and their serviciability (is that a word?) - tape decks and turn tables are rather easy to service for regular maintenance and small fixes... CD players have some mechanical serviciable partts, but once you get to the optic, it gets beyond the lay person. Me honestly - I like all three for different reasons... tapes for mixes (burning a mix tape on CD while easy and effective, doesnt give the same end result), and I do like to switch sides, time goes by faster and flows better for some odd reason (CDs are too long, gets tiring in some situations). Vinyl is vinyl... Vinyl is drink in hand relaxing. CDs are great when wanting to listen full albums whilst doing chores or other activities, need not worry about the medium running out. My very subjective two cents.
After listening to music on all sorts of media for years I am beginning to doubt the whole "warm" vs. "cold" sound thing. How is this even defined? The only difference to my ears is that vinyl records very often will have imperfections like dust that crackles and pops, but remove that and it's the same as the CD. But those crackles and pops aren't "warm", they are just... sounds. I highly suspect that what people actually mean is that the imperfect sound of a crackling record (and associated perceived nostalgia factor) gives them a warm and cozy feeling in their chest, not their ears.
I can describe personally as: Warm - imperfect, crack and pops - medium adding to the end result sound. Cold - too perfect, too quiet, vacuum. Digi. Again it is an opinion, not science.
Yeah, I think we pretty much agree about the definition as it is generally used. I guess I just find it weird as an argument for the "objective" superiority of vinyl as it is based on the sound actually being imperfect. I'm sure if you played a perfectly clean vinyl record with no artifacts in the sound, these people wouldn't be able to guess in a blind test if it was digital or not. I'm a big fan of cassette tapes myself, and it turns out that even with a semi decent recording on cheap type 1 tape, people are still surprised we're not listening to streaming music lol But yeah I agree it's indeed not science
Idk man tapes always sound underwater to me, I just can’t get the appeal of them
Hmmm, you had a bad player for them to be sounding underwater. I've recently taped some flaccs I have of music which I had no physical medium of. Full albums... I do my own edits as far as track spacing and some fading if I need to squeeze in 1 minute or so (46 min album to fit in 45 side of 90 min tape). It is not underwater. It sound nice. I do not use Dolby. And I am typing on a Pioneer C-F7272 or my Harman Kardon TD 292.
Tapes are incredibly durable, convenient and get the job done. I always hated CDs the most in cars. Too easy to scratch when swapping discs in a car.
Tapes are the perfect medium for the car, especially with auto reverse. +1
Wish CDs and dvds were like blu rats durability wise. I remember my ps4 discs took a lot of abuse
Blu-rays are actually more sensitive to abuse because of the higher density. The reason your PS4 discs took so much abuse yet still worked is because your console installed the game to your hard drive on first boot.
I have literally never scratched a DVD or Blu-Ray before. I’ve bought used DVDs with minor looking scratches but it wouldn’t play for crap even after buffing them out.
CD is generally better in terms of price, sound quality, and avaliablility of releases. A lot of albums that have been out of press on vinyl for decades are readily available on CD. In terms of the tangible physical aspect, vinyl wins. The big 12-inch artwork, watching the album spin, the fact that it's actually physically pressed onto the record, everything feels a bit more "real" in a way. I think of CD as the midpoint between physical media and digital files. I'll buy some releases on CD, but for albums that are important to me, I usually go for the vinyl.
Once a vinyl is scratched it is ruined. So yes I agree.
A most pre-80’s albums in particular are better on vinyl! After that it comes down to production and flow of the album. For instance, Deftones Saturday Night Wrists is a “Vinyl album” for me, but Around the Fur is CD. The Smashing Pumpkins Adore is a CD album, but Mellon Collie and Siamese Dream are vinyl :)
I prefer vinyl when in my car.
I do
Same! People just like Vinyl for the aesthetics cause that's the less funtional method of hearing music. It takes space Only works in Vinyls players The sound isn't even good The disk are fragile In compare to Cds, although, I have a soft spot for Cassette, even if those are even easier to break than Vinyl
I don’t ask these questions, nor answer them. I play vinyl, cds, cassettes, mp3, shit off YouTube. As long as it sounds good, I’m there.
Objectively CDs are better, in the sense that there are little to no limitations. You can put any master made for vinyl on CD but not the reverse. I remember reading an interview of a long time engineer/producer, I forget who, but he did some big albums. He said that the difference in recording digitally vs analog is objectively better, if not perfect. Tape, vinyl had so many limitations that you couldn't always get the sound you wanted, plus the whole degradation aspect of the physical medium itself. So I guess my point is that CD/digital is 100% objectively better than any analog medium. People may prefer vinyl, tape, or whatever. But it's not for the reason some think. You can make an "analog" sounding album digitally, but most artists don't because that's not how they want it to sound. There are so many audio effects that accurately reproduce tape and vinyl that anything is possible with digital and only keeps getting better with more software development. Amp sims are so good now that many artists don't use actual amps in the studio or live anymore.
Ive collect vinyl for the past 3ish years and still do but they are super expensive and I’m a broke college kid 😩 so I can only get about maybe one a month but recently started getting cds and it’s fun to get like 4 good cds for what you could get for one vinyl, still love vinyl but cds make it more available to have a physical copy of an album you love
Pros and cons for both for sure, but right now my focus is on CDs for the objectively better sound quality. If there’s an album I want with a great cover, I buy the vinyl and sometimes also the CD for the reason above. Also, vinyl prices are ridiculous now, I can get new CDs of the albums I parted ways with for under $10.
CDs can sound better than vinyl since they have better dynamics.
CDs are cheaper, more convenient, less fragile, and sound perfectly fine. I’m not spending $30 more on a record for the sound quality to be 10% better and have it get scratched by slightly mishandling it so I can’t even play any of it anymore.
Never used Vinyl but I know they won’t fit in my car
First pressings of CDs have younger masters and sound as good if not better than (clean) first pressings of records to me. my vote goes to CDs as records I truly want have gotten really expensive. unavoidably, really.
The mastering isn’t always good on CD compared to vinyl, but when mastered CDs are better!
At least I can afford CDs
Obviously. Vinyl is a fetish, which is fine. No one is making me listen to an lesser fidelity, more expensive format. They can have it.
Absolutely! (Owner of 2,050 CDs collecting for 40 years) To settle my FOMO for vinyl 2 years ago I bought a used but reconditioned Pioneer PL-4, Grado needle, using a NAD Phono Amp to my Yamaha / Mirage system. And I swear I tried to love vinyl again for weeks. I tried several LPs including a brand new Rush album but the ANNOYING background noises - hiss, tick, whatever. And the nostalgic allure of flipping a LP over to continue listening to the rest of the album was quickly lost. That was and still is definitely the reason I love CD sound better than vinyl. I also appreciate that when there is quiet in the CD track it is actually *quiet*. BTW - I gave the turntable setup to my father in law who is collecting early British rock LPs.
Cds are, for the most part, exactly how the person who mixed the cd wants you to hear it. They sounds great.
Me. I was so happy when cds came out. I never liked vinyl.
Kinda hard to play vinyl records in my car.
CDs are more convenient. I can hold them nicely/easily in my hand while looking at them. They're more solid. They store easier/better/safer; less likely to be damaged on that note. They're cheaper. As a collector, they are easier to find.
vinyl isn't portable, can't shuffle vinyl, can't loop vinyl, can't download vinyl, have to keep flipping vinyl
Yeah I have both, but find myself using the CD changer more often. I love collecting vinyl, but honestly listen to CD's way more because i can put on my CD changer and let 4 records go without having to stop and flip thing, put things away, wipe everything down. I get its about the ritual, records are hard to use on purpose, its like grinding your own coffee.
Smaller, less noise, less care and I think better sound from CDs. Warped, scratchy LPs - I left that all behind when digital came out.
In terms of art direction and packaging, vinyl is always better but it terms of practicality, CDs win
I mainly buy CDs. They are, with some exceptions, much more affordable than vinyl these days. My car is a 2014 and has a CD player. I have ripped most of my CD collection to FLAC and I have a Hi-Res player with about 500 Gig of memory, so that's mainly what I listen to instead of the actual CDs lately. The only downside to CDs is how sensitive they are to damage. I mostly have good luck buying used CDs, but every so often I get a scratched one and it's a real bummer. I know, you can resurface them, but I don't have that equipment. Bit rot is another problem, however I rarely encounter it. Overall, I prefer CDs to vinyl.
I always understood bit rot was basically a problem on CDs from the 80s- when I had physical media I always kept CDs in a case and never had an issue with scratches except maybe 1 or 2
It isn't a common problem, but I come across a CD with rot a few times a year. I have a massive collection, spanning my entire basement and a storage unit (it's a sickness) and it's usually the earlier CDs that have this problem. It's not common, but it does happen.
It's an unfair comparison. CDs were developed 30 years after LPs. They were both revolutionary products on their time.
cds all the way
My older brother bought a brand new 1971 Pontiac Firebird Trans AM. (The flaming red chicken he called it) And boys and girls: it came with a Blauplunkt 8 track player. Woooohooo! First time I heard Santana's first record on 8 track. Them the days. Remember the old guys in the neighbour checking it out saying, '8 track, air conditioning...boy you're riding in style' like a big shot'! ha ha
Anybody with a functioning brain…
They’re both great in their own right. There’s no need to bash other fellow enjoyers of physical media. The only sides are Streaming vs Physical media. Personally I collect Vinyl, CDs, and tapes
I use vinyl, cd, and cassette Vinyl sounds warmer to me and I like the sound, CD best quality sound on paper, cassette sounds worse but it’s fun to mess around with
Yes.
Yup.
Well you are probably going to get the answer you want from this sub. But, yes, audio wise, it's obvious that they sound better in terms of clarity. That said, I enjoy vinyl for the physical aspect that the audio is literally engrained into the format.
I'm a huge tape head but CD are definitely more accessible and affordable. I ruined my favorite dire straights album at the opening to money for nothing because the foam pad fell off and the tape rolled in the player. On the other hand I had a CD I found on the ground silver side down it was Korn life is peachy i took it and got it resurfaced for $1 and then listened to it 10 times and it still sounds great! I don't care for vinyl as much for personal collection however I do enjoy listening to anything on vinyl.
Way, way better. Vinyl?...warm my ass, more like snap, crackle, and pop. I guess people consider that warm. Don't even get me started on inner groove distortion. White noise garbage.
I listen to most of my collection on the phone these days, but the rips come from the CDs I buy. I've been through most of the formats as they've come and gone. Vinyl is a waste of space and criminally overpriced
Nobody thinks this. That's why LPs were phased out. Then some millennial/gen z'er (I get them mixed up) who had never seen a vinyl record said "everything old is new again" and the vinyl fad began. It'll wind down eventually....then the CD fad will start.
There was always a small but vocal community who continued collecting vinyl. Even in the 90s and 2000s, where vinyl was at its lowest in terms of sales, albums were still pressed to vinyl in smaller quantities. To say the vinyl resurgence is entirely based on people being unfamiliar with the format is just wrong. I think it's more related to the increasing reliance on streaming and digital files. People are sick of being sold digital files and subscriptions that don't actually amount to anything. Vinyl is basically the complete antithesis of this concept. It's physical to the point that it can be inconvenient. I don't think there'll ever be a huge CD resurgence because CDs don't have that tangibility. Sure, you get the artwork, but it's really just a way to get files from point A to point B and playback those files. Vinyl is super tangible, almost to a fault, which is an issue people miss having. Just my theory. I honestly think the vinyl resurgence is a side effect of the decreasing tangibility of our purchases. People want to actually own the shit that they pay for. Owning CDs is still owning the music, but it's stuck in the midpoint between physical mediums and digital, which is what people are trying to get away from.
CDs are on the way to a comeback.
Good. But I've never stopped buying them.
I sure hope not. I like cheap CDs.
Agree. But when? I work in the record industry and the "vinyl resurgence" is laughable at best. The fact that people call records "vinyl" or worse "vinyls" just proves my point about the fetish.No one calls CDs Polycarbonates.
I get phenomenal sound out of both CDs and vinyl and if you aren’t you may want to look at your setup.
CDs are more convenient and more durable. Plus I can easily rip a CD to put on my computer and smartphone. What I don't like CDs and digital formats, but kinda like about vinyl is that the Loudness Wars have made some CDs just bad. Dialing the compression down a notch for mastering to vinyl lets some arrangements breath more.
I have CDs and vinyl, lots of both. It's a case-by-case basis. Lots of early masters on CD sound terrible, and lots of newer vinyl reissues fail to justify their existence. Certain vinyl pressings (esp of analog recordings) will be the best example of the material at hand, while CD is the way to go for lots of digital recordings. Vinyl was easier to justify buying when it was dirt cheap, and I hope CDs don't keep following the same trajectory that vinyl has. In short: CDs are more practical, and have a better chance of sounding better, but certainly aren't the way to go 100% of the time.
I like them both but i’ve been buying more cds lately mostly because they’re cheaper
I love vinyl, but I'm 23 years old so I grew up with cd's so they're more notalgic for me. Also collecting cd's is a way cheaper hobby than collecting vinyls. I am looking into starting to collect cassette tapes as well, I think they look cool but that's about all I know about them lol
CDs generally are more susceptible to wear. That’s kind of the only downside.
They are better, as far as sound quality.
The cd sounds good almost anywhere while for vinyl to sound better you need to invest a lot, there are vinyls that sound incredible with the right equipment and sometimes having all that investment, a bad impression or recording on vinyl sounds terrible, the CD is practical As many here say, you can carry it in your car even if it is a new one, in some way you can get a discman with a transmitter or for personal use with headphones, the CD reaches more places than the vinyl and at this moment you can still find it at a good price.
*records*
They’re axing AM radio as well.
Absolutely. Vinyls have horrible prices, and you need to flip them over to listen to the entire album
Better audio quality, better pricing, better form factor, better inserts. Yes I prefer CD's in every way
Vinyl is fun and collectible but CD beats it in almost any other department
Who thinks trucks are better than cars?
Cars are better
Nobody likes vinyls because they're good, they like them because they're aesthetic. They're large, sound horrible, and the cardboard sleeves are horrible compared to jewel cases. There's obviously a reason they got replaced by better mediums.
lol that's so not true. you really think every collector buys vinyl for the aesthetic?
I don't like vinyl because they are aesthetic, so you are wrong.
Yes. I'm half streaming half owning. I still collect music for mp3 because it can disappear from streaming any time also It can gives me more customize options like pitch changer and genre tag organize. cd is easy to convert to mp3. also it's easy to store. cd is way more cheaper than vinyl that's the win. I'm not rich at all. I just compared college dropout by kanye west. vinyl is +15 usd. I can buy another brand new cd with 15 usd. used vinyl is expensive too. I'm broke. I'm not "audiophile". I won't pay extra money for BIG album art.
Definitely.
Yo.
I prefer stolen Flac files from torrents and Soulseek.
Personally, no. vinyl is the superior medium to me, between the fidelity, extra artwork of a gatefold, posters and booklets crammed into the sleeves, its just my preferef way of enjoying music especially when on a low mushroom dose or high edible dose. however I love CD's for ease and cost effectiveness for collecting. I rarely find good records at the thrift, CD's are $1 a piece there
It’s been ‘proven’ many times over, that vinyl offers a better reproduction of the original source. I have versions of favourite albums on both formats, and can hear a difference in the articulation/separation of vocals/instrumentation - but it is not consistent, and vinyl that is grubby or dusty will ruin the translation of audio. However, speaking from experience, the quality of your turntable, power supply, interconnects, amplifier, speaker cable, speakers, speaker mounts, and room acoustics all play a part in achieving the best possible output. CDs may be more forgiving than vinyl, but will still be improved by a good player, interconnects, amplifier, etc. It can get expensive, but good choices can keep the costs manageable…
Well, since the 80s, music has been produced completely digitally. Analog instruments are converted with high-quality A/D converters at least in 24 bit/192 kHz, digitally recorded, digitally pimped with effects, voices autotuned, digitally mixed, digitally mastered. In the end, everything is converted back via D/A and pressed onto the analog medium vinyl. If you then compare the signal of the D/A converter with the signal of the record on the best and most expensive turntable and preamp, you will definitely notice a loss. Recordings from the "good, old analog time" have been stored digitally at the labels for a long time, if only because the original tapes decompose even with the most elaborate storage. Technically, only records are produced purely analog before the 80s. And the difference in sound quality is probably unmistakable…bad. So at the end, „better Vinyl Sound“ is from my perspective only religion, meanwhile big business and voodoo 🤷🏻♂️ Edit: Biggest advantage of vinyl is the cover. So music is „physical“ for consumers again, compared with smaller CD and streaming. But at the end, real lossless streaming with 24 Bit/192 kHz beats vinyl from reproduction perspective. Back to business perspective: Mastering differs between the planned output medium: vinyl, CD, streaming. This is the whole trick to keep the discussion between vinyl, CD and streaming alive... so that consumers listen to the songs via stream on the go, and still invest in vinyl or CD because of the „better sound“… and feel better depending on the religion. It’s a complicated world…🙄
Why stop at the 80’s? In the 60’s and 70’s tape was king of recording, with engineers complaining about the lack of warmth from tape compression when digital recording took over. That tape compression is high frequency roll off. It makes the (specious) arguments about sampling rates irrelevant.
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To me the biggest difference is that, because vinyl is a physical medium with limits in the physical world, it is impossible to brickwall a vinyl record. If someone says a digitally recorded album sounds better on vinyl it’s because they did a specific master for vinyl that isn’t brickwalled. CDs are excellent. I love their durability, portability & always accurate audio reproduction. However, when record producers manipulate the audio to sound like shit (see: loudness wars) perfect audio reproduction becomes a flaw, not a benefit.
I do like the sound of vinyl so I can’t argue with that
Obviously Vinyl is gonna sound a bit better but CDs sound a lot better than streaming and are incredibly convenient. Easy to use, sound great, lots of support, and easy to make mixtapes/playlists on blank ones.
Vinyl factually has less dynamic range and tone flexibility. The only reason it ever sounds better is if it has a better master.
That's what i meant. It usually does have a better master.
other person said it best. if music is from digital era aka cd era. it doesn't sound "better" in vinyl
100
CD is better quality sound, no doubt. Vinyl provides a warm aesthetic from the analog process.
Yes.
CD users.
I think they have better sound, yes.
More mobile but not better
own plenty of both and think vinyl is cooler
I love both but if it’s an album I love, I’ll get it on vinyl. Why limit yourself to one medium? They’re both great Also, vinyl is usually mastered from higher quality sources than CD. This doesn’t stop me from buying CDs though, because they’re both fantastic mediums. And hey, at least we aren’t on Spotify 🤮
I looove my cds, but if i had to choose between keeping 400 cds or 400 records i love i pick the records
No one.
Many cds are super compressed and sound like total shit ! Cds with high bit rates and 5.1 mixes are amazing but the common cd usually doesnt meet a high standard . Vinyl sounds great in a good system and certainly has its placee especially for those who still see albums for what they are , complete works of art (album covers) booklets , etc .
Well mastered CD's are definitely better. Over compressed CD's that are brickwalled to the max are only suitable for the trash can.
CD’s are cheaper, vinyl’s sound better
CD makers
Agreed.
I think CD Collectors and Vinyl collectors are both after different things. Thats what makes it so perfect for each. I feel like sound wise I really can’t say though because I don’t have a good cd player or sound system for it.