ats:
"Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs."
Grrr. No. This is not true. I wish people would stop repeating this particular bit of audiophile rubbish.
A very good record, in perfect condition, played on expensive equipment, can sound better than a very-poorly-mastered CD.
But arguing that vinyl is an inherently better format because modern CDs are often badly mastered is completely missing the point.
CDs from the mid 80s to the late 90s sounded great -- the problem is not the format, it's the idiot mastering engineers who use too much compression.
(A trick, incidentally, that was invented for use on vinyl, where the inherent physical limitations of the media require that you compress the audio signal to make it possible for the stylus to track the record; CD has no such limitation.)
"Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
What rubbish. Show me a modern cartridge with a usable frequency response about 22kHz that's picking up anything in that range except surface noise.
"San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files."
""Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder.""
I'm not terribly surprised, if you're mastering for MP3 -- an obsolete compressed audio format with awful sound quality. Try uncompressed CD audio and it will sound better.
ats: "Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs."
Grrr. No. This is not true. I wish people would stop repeating this particular bit of audiophile rubbish.
A very good record, in perfect condition, played on expensive equipment, can sound better than a very-poorly-mastered CD.
But arguing that vinyl is an inherently better format because modern CDs are often badly mastered is completely missing the point.
CDs from the mid 80s to the late 90s sounded great -- the problem is not the format, it's the idiot mastering engineers who use too much compression.
(A trick, incidentally, that was invented for use on vinyl, where the inherent physical limitations of the media require that you compress the audio signal to make it possible for the stylus to track the record; CD has no such limitation.)
"Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary."
What rubbish. Show me a modern cartridge with a usable frequency response about 22kHz that's picking up anything in that range except surface noise.
"San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files."
""Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder.""
I'm not terribly surprised, if you're mastering for MP3 -- an obsolete compressed audio format with awful sound quality. Try uncompressed CD audio and it will sound better.