CDs are in every way better than vinyl records. They are smaller, much higher quality audio, lower noise floor and don’t wear out by being played. The fact that CD sales are behind vinyl is a sign that the world has gone mad. The fact you can rip and stream your own CD media is fantastic because generally remasters are not good and streaming services typically only have remastered versions, not originals. You have no control on streaming services about what version of an album you’re served or whether it’ll still be there tomorrow. Not an issue with physical media.
The vast majority of people listen to music using equipment that produces audio of poor quality, especially those that stream using ear buds. It makes me very sad when people don’t care that what they’re listening to could sound so much better, especially if played through a hifi from a CD player, or using half decent (not beats) headphones.
There’s plenty of good sounding and well produced music out there, but it’s typically played back through the equivalent of two cans and some string. I’m not sure people remember how good good music can sound when played back through good kit.
Add to that:
Solid State Class AB and modern Class D amplifiers are far superior to any Tube amplifier. At this point, I would go as far that higher end Class D amplifiers are better than most Class AB at this point. Hypex and IcePower have made great strides in the sound quality of their amps, which are extremely efficient as well.
You want a lot of 2nd order harmonics in your sound! Great, get it through a DSP that will duplicate it through a modern amplifier and stop heating your room up using tubes.
If I’m going to listen to digital music, it may out may not come from a CD. Vinyl provides a different experience that digital provides. CD’s are just a way to distribute digital content.
Have you not heard of FLAC? You can get files at higher bit rates and sampling frequencies than CDs. That being said I much prefer vinyl collecting. No it doesn’t always sound the best but I feel more in touch with the album. No ability to skip tracks, having to flip it over or change disks is more engaging than just pressing play.
You can still choose your tracks on vinyl, it’s just more manual.
Look at the grooves, and in-between them there’d be thin almost ungrooved flat lines going into the centre: those are the track separators. Hover the tonearm above those and drop it in to play the track you want.
I used to do this with some records I wouldn’t have a big care about with preservation (compilations such as Now That’s What I Call Music!), since it would mean those tracks would have more wear than the record as a whole.
Considering that vinyl is shaping up to be the final physical media that ANY art is distributed on on a mass scale, why the fuck are we arguing to dissuade people from it?
CDs are so fucking sterile, when I play one I feel like I should be wearing a lab coat and latex gloves. The machine slides the disc in gracefully, as if it were my butler. The mechanical whine of plastic being spun by a precision servo while a literal laser beam seeks for the opening bits requires any robot who views a video of it in Louisiana to submit ID to prove it’s age.
Yeah of course they sound better but the experience is not the same.
Post your system or stfu.
My hifi is: Audiolab 6000A integrated amp Second hand NAD C541i CD player Wharfedale Pacific Evo 40 floor standers I’ve had 20 years
Connected to my PC I have a studio monitor setup, but that’s mostly as I run my guitar though it. Prior to that I had a second hand NAD C320 amp and Wharfedale 9.1 bookshelf speakers. All bought for about £165 and sounded fantastic.
that’s a little under two grand to listen to cds in one room for anyone playing along at home.
what version of The Well Tuned Piano do you think is best?
Too rich for you?
The CD part is just one component. Swap in a Wiim instead of the CD player for an excellent streaming setup. It also functions as the amp and speakers for the TV.
For something 20 years in the making it’s not bad and I bet better systems can be had for less. Certainly my first system cost almost nothing but still sounded fantastic. My recently departed second setup cost £165 all in and in many ways was just as good as my main system.
The point is not my exact setup, but that it is any kind of a hifi at all.
Nah, but it’s important that people understand the degree of brandy snifter shit we’re talking about. On some level price is a valid measurement.
So what’s your favorite well tuned piano?
Native headphone jack on laptop. The power supply noise is just awful for everything, except it’s the native and approximate era-appropriate sound for late 1990’s low bitrate MP3 files.
Foreword: I only stream my music, from FLAC preferably. I don’t own vynils but mostly i don’t own CD’s anymore either.
CD is dead and should be dead. Rip it and stream it, full stop. No need or reason to keep a degrading digital format when you can just rip it (full quality and store as FLAC) and stream it. That’s the whole point.
Vynil instead gives you the experience of listening, with all the associated crap/fun depending on your POV.
So while there is a case for vynil today, but I don’t share it, there is zero case for CDs. Just download the bits. Don’t waste plastic and shit with a polluting and degrading medium that make no sense today that downloading a full quality uncompressed audio file takes seconds.
Compartmentalized optical media is a really nice way of storing things, though. I’m way more likely to listen to an album from start to finish if it’s from a CD than a folder of files on my PC. Plus CDs are dirt cheap now more than ever. I get used CDs for like $2-5 each.
I’ve just realised you spelled vynil correctly and everyone else has been either spelling it wrong or pronouncing it wrong since its conception
Did I? Maybe because I am not an English speaker? Good to know tough, I went by instinct
I was joking in that your spelling makes far more literal sense than the actual spelling
I prefer yours and I’m using it from now on 😂
LOL
Did you see how upset that other guy got about your spelling and my joke? Spent five minutes looking it up apparently.
The British English for that is a pedantic wanker. It just trips off the tongue
Yeah, a CD? Incredible, can hold Twelve songs!!
I’d even prefer a cassette.
Moreover… ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
CD is dead and should be dead. Rip it and stream it, full stop. No need or reason to keep a degrading digital format when you can just rip it (full quality and store as FLAC) and stream it. That’s the whole point.
This sentiment is somehow hostile to both artists and listeners. That’s not the whole point. The whole point is that when I buy a thing (book, music, video), I own the thing and can store, backup, and transfer ownership as I see fit, not according to the whims of future licensing deals. I don’t want to buy what is basically an NFT of the music. I want to buy the physical object. I want to be able to physically transfer that object.
You’ll own nothing and like it I guess. Not me though. I’ve lived through too many failing companies, disappearing websites and services, hostile licensing deals that alienate and disenfranchise artists and fans, and general corporate greed. Let me buy the CD as directly from the band as possible. Let me take it from there and use whatever I choose for equipment, format, or software to enjoy it.
For the last few decades, very few people that have declared a popular media format dead have turned out to be correct.
You want to purchase a vibration of the air?
a sound?
I understand why you want a physical object to hold, but owning the music to me means no DRM, then the bits are mine and I can do whatever I want with them.
Indeed go buy posters, lyrics, any physical item you want from your band. Caps, cups, t-shirts, any form of art.
But I still don’t see a reason for CDs. Then buy vinyls, at least the art is far bigger!
Yes, I want an unencumbered physical representation of the artists work, just like you’d expect from an art print or book. I thought I was pretty clear about that. I don’t want merch. I want the art. It’s my money to spend to support the artists the way I choose, not an argument you can “win”.
Not trying to win anything. But isn’t the music the art from the artist? Do usually the artist also design the covers and albums themselves?
CDs are better than vinyl in the same exact way reddit is better than lemmy: cheap, easier to manage, mainstream content. If you look for a sound that’s not strictly higher quality but that gives you a more authentic vibe, vinyl is the way
“Authentic vibe” is a coping mechanism to justify spending more for less.
Well maybe, I think it might be an acquired taste: all the little imperfections derived by the industrial technique in which a vinyl is made make it sound a little weirder but that’s the main reason you start to like it. Imperfection is something that might grow on you if yoh give it a chance
I dont think most people like vinyl today because of sound quality. They just like the ritual of playing it and things like big cover art. If you want convenience then just listen to flac files.
There’s also funfactor in having physical media and limited choice. A phone with an entire collection on it is just. . plain. standard. even boring. And the handicapped phone UI ruins the rest of the smartphone experience if you wanna do other things with the phone other than listen to music.
Modern CD players also read newer formats, unlike the old-stock CD players off of ebay from 30+ years ago that only read raw CDA tracks
Kind of late to the party here, but I’m going to offer my take anyway.
You’re right, and you’re wrong. CDs are better than vinyl records in terms of sound quality, but CDs are absolutely pointless. Instead of a CD, go to Bandcamp, send some money to your favorite artist, and download the audio files in FLAC format. You own the media (albeit digitally) and it can never be taken away from you as you make sure it’s saved to a safe location. You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.
On the other hand, while I recognize that CDs are better quality, I am an avid collector of vinyl records, at least for a few specific genres. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my HiFi setup, built my own tube amplifier, and I can say as a point of pride that there are absolutely no solid-state components in the signal path between the record and my speakers. While owning your own media makes sense in the era of streaming, owning physical media is in no way practical, but it’s just fun. When I want to listen to a record, it’s an event. I’ll remove the record from its sleeve, maybe take it over to my record cleaner if it’s a bit dusty or has some static charge. At the same time, I’ve just switched on my isolation transformer, and the tubes in my preamp and power amp are warming up. Then I’ll place the record on the turntable, start the motor, drop the needle, and sit back in my recliner to enjoy the music.
If I’m sitting at my desk working, I’ll put on some bluetooth headphones and play some music from my phone. But I’m not listening to music, I’m working and putting on music to pass the time, help get me motivated, whatever. If I want to listen to music solely for the joy of listening to music, I’m going to play a record.
You may even be getting better quality audio than you would on a CD.
Not disagreeing, but “may” is the operative word here. But it’s always worthwhile to support your favorite artist when and where you can. :)
Here’s the rub: It’s possible to have way more lossless resolution than 44khz/16bit (CD audio) with FLAC, but that depends on what the artist is going to ship. And don’t forget that your playback device also matters - not everything has a DAC that natively supports higher resolution audio, forcing some loss to perform playback.
Yep. That’s exactly what I was referring to when I said “may.” In my experience, most artists release 44k/16 files, but I have some 24-bit versions.
I would venture a guess, though, that given the same audio hardware, no human being can tell the difference. I can hear differences between lossy compression at “moderate” nitrates and lossless audio, but I feel like anything over 256k MP3 is getting into placebo territory.
That doesn’t keep me from downloading 24-bit FLAC, though, because I’m s huge data hoarder.
Did you just wake up from a coma that started in 1985?
CDs are better than vinyl for every reason that MP3s are better than CDs. That’s not news to anyone.
Vinyl is not “better” by any of the metrics you mentioned, but I prefer it because if I feel like buying a physical medium for the purpose of collecting music, I want my music to actually be physical. I don’t want a collection that boils down to 1s and 0s, I want one that more closely replicates the original source of the music.
That’s the reason I like vinyl, even if I do listen to digital music far far more.
CDs more closely represent the original music than vinyl though and are physical media you can collect.
mp3s are objectively inferior on all fronts except file size
Nope, mp3 is not “better” than CD since its a lossy format. It uses how we perceive audio so we notice it as little as possible, but you definitely loose details
Absolutely! With half decent very affordable headphones and my middle aged hearing it is possible to tell MP3 from FLAC pretty accurately.
You just can’t tell the difference with 320bps mp3. Less yes for sure.
So sometimes yes, sometimes no 🤷🏻
Yes and you can get all your calories and nutrients from a processed paste, that’s much more dense than regular food so you don’t need to eat as much and can fit into a small tube so is much more convenient than regular food.
The fact people prefer normal food to Hugh density nutrition paste is proof the world has gone mad.
I don’t think that’s a good example.
The answer is simple: there is no “correct” way to enjoy art. Anyone saying vinyl is higher quality than digital is deluding themselves, but that doesn’t make vinyl a worse way to listen to music.
It’s more convenient to beat a video game on easy, and yet, many people find greater satisfaction in playing harder difficulties. It depends on how you would rather spend your time.
Some of my 25+ year old cd’s appear to have started “rotting” inside and playback has been compromised / ruined in many cases.
Can I ask how they were stored? I’ve got 30+ year old CDs that run great. Only ones that I have issues with are those that are scratched.
MP3 is lossy, WAV is not. And that “warmth” you get with vinyl is just because analog sounds fuzzy.
I’d say nostalgia is a big factor in what keeps technically inferior sound quality in the market
Repressing are the top sellers … yeah
