Shamefully i have never heard anything on Vinyl so i dont know if its worth my buying a few records & maybe starting a collection, lots of people seem to swear that the quailty is so much better - is this really the case, im not a musician or anything so wld i actually hear the difference ?

For me, growing up in the vinyl era, I can definately hear the difference. Vinyl much warmer, and deeper sound. Digital media loses the warmth and harmonic blending of the sounds of the original recordings. For new stuff, that is RECORDED digitally, no difference between the CD or Lp. If you have friends that collect vinyl, go visit them and compare A to B a cd to its vinyl counterpart...say Sticky, Bleed or Beggars, and see what you think. One problem for some, is the expense of buying NM copies of vintage records. Its pretty expensive these days.

Good luck!

I agree with the above, vinyl has a much warmer sound, cds sound harsh and tinny.I have keeped all my vinyl albums they are my heritage.I must have about 300 hundred stones on vinyl, lots of imports and bootlegs I used to love buying an album then read all the sleeve notes, with cds its just not the same.

You will of course have to have a decent stereo system, and a turntable that is high quality to get the most out of vinyl LP's. And not all vinyl pressings are good either. (Different pressings of the same record can sound very different.)

[www.reverbnation.com]

To answer your question: Yes

Try Lucille by Little Richard on a Regentone Radiogram circa 1956 then you be a rockin!

Yes it is...but it's not a simple question or answer.
I don't have time now...but I'll add my two pennies worth in the morning ;^)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-06-24 19:15 by Spud.

Hey Ablett, those monstrous single speakers in the old radiograms were really somethin else werent they. Dont know about the regenttones but the old RCA was great.

Well, you can even go further. I've been collecting 78's since I was a kid, and for certain things they can't be beat. If you've never heard Little Walter or Muddy on a Chess 10 inch, or Little Richard on Specialty, you will be amazed. Particularly for the Chess label, the 78's sound so much more alive than even the best LP or CD pressing. Of course, they are also fragile, hard to store, and require special turntables.

78's are the way forward! Buy any Rock N Roll 78, get yourself a HMV 102 Gramophone, wind the bugger up and roll with it. Fabulous raw sound!!!

"Hey Ablett, those monstrous single speakers in the old radiograms were really somethin else werent they. Dont know about the regenttones but the old RCA was great."

I've just had a late 50's Radiogram serviced to brand new condition. The single speaker gives a great thumping sound AND can play several LP's one after the other. None of that 'shuffle' mummbojumbo.... It's the sound systems that the LP's were made to be played on.....

Vinyl = Warmer & Deeper sound

Great formula and very truthful, but my vinyls also have lots of pops and crackles which take away from the overall superiority.
I once did a vinyl/CD matrix onto reel to reel....useless experiment. Nothing solved.

Yes, crackling can become a pain in the bum and ruin the listening experience.

Vinyl isn't always superior, one case is where the master source has been digital, or digitally remastered.

Quote
His Majesty
Yes, crackling can become a pain in the bum and ruin the listening experience.

Vinyl isn't always superior, one case is where the master source has been digital, or digitally remastered.

Agreed about the vinyl pressing. I am just likely that I have every old Stones record in top nick....I have one mono Let It Bleed that has NEVER BEEN PLAYED. I made a tape of a Near mint one, so I can live with that, or if I do play the vinyl, I play that one. Generally, the older the pressing, the better, I still prefer a good ole US or UK to the Mofi of Sticky Fingers...although the Ya Yas Mobile Fidelity from the box set is the best pressing ever...only thing better is the 7.5 IPS reel to reel tape. That will flat blow the fillings out of your teeth.

JR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-06-24 21:36 by stone-relics.

Not only is it warmer but the high frequencies sound nicer - cymbols just aren't the same on CD.

It all has to do with the true sound wave...an analog sound wave is pure...a digital sound wave is made of rectangles and in order to create a wave, the digital wave somehow has to ignore things or estimate things or lose things...I am no expert on it, but that's basically it...maybe someone who knows what they are talking about can explain it better.

PECMAN

Quote
Pecman
It all has to do with the true sound wave...an analog sound wave is pure...a digital sound wave is made of rectangles and in order to create a wave, the digital wave somehow has to ignore things or estimate things or lose things...I am no expert on it, but that's basically it...maybe someone who knows what they are talking about can explain it better.

PECMAN

Yes, this is it. The smoothe analog wave is a nice round curve. Digital media makes points and connects the dots...its estimating the sound. Digital is much improved with the advent of HDCD and SACD, but I doubt if they will ever get the really close to analog.

JR

Throw on a mint copy of Let It Bleed and let your ears be the judge. It will be VERY obvious.

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King Snake
Throw on a mint copy of Let It Bleed and let your ears be the judge. It will be VERY obvious.

Absolutely....the UK mono is arguably the greatest sounding Stones record, ever.

JR

Yes.
But good sounding cd's do exist. A not good sounding one is imho Bigger Bang.
Bridges is better sounding.

if you cant tell the difference, there is no difference.

with the right gear vinyl can rival digital any day, but only if your ears are picky enough. for most, no difference is noticed. to others who notice, it means the world.

The thing is that a lot of cd's today sound bad (to me anyway) compared to 10 years ago. More compressed and less dynamics, more loudness. I like new music too don't get me wrong, but last night I put on Who's Next (The Who) on vinyl and it sounds wonderful. You can get close with a cd if recorded on analogue tape and with good mastering. And a room or studio with good acoustics of course. But the will to do it has to be there. The Raconteurs latest sounds great.

Quote
barbabang
Yes.
But good sounding cd's do exist. A not good sounding one is imho Bigger Bang.
Bridges is better sounding.

I've never heard the vinyl version of ABB - anyone?

But I have an old fashioned stereo system made for vinyls - an old Luxman amp - on which I also play CD's. Loads of CD's sound ok - not so ABB. ABB sounds greater on my PC system, actually.

I read an article recently claiming that today's music is made for ipods and PC speakers - and even worse mobil phones - which should be the reason for the sound being so compressed and therefore not "welcomed" by oldfashioned "huge systems"

I don't really like the new systems myself - especially not the surround sound systems - they sound like they were made for Dire Straits (I like them, actually) and Pink Floyd (hate them....)

Enough rambling....

I've heard the vinyl version of A Bigger Bang mofur. It is mildly better sounding, but not very much! The vinyl version is just a digital copy for vinyl. It is not properly mastered for vinyl, which should be the case (a shame)
Good new vinyl examples are the latest one from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the last White Stripes, the last Raconteurs.

I think ANY recording is limited (or enhanced) by it's mastering. It's all sound being broken down to either 1s and 0s for digital, or little tiks in the grooves over vinyl.

Take a tape that was mastered for vinyl circa 1970 and burn it to CD and it won't sound right. The same will happen to a nice digital recording (like Brothers In Arms by Dire Straights) pressed to vinyl (very flat).

I think record companies have been more worried about getting nre 'product' out than doing proper re-mastering when releasing older recording on CD. I have my turntable still, and over 400 LPs....but I prefer listening to a well recorded, well mastered, click- and skip- and pop-free CD in general.....

(Though Who's Next and Exiles do sound better on a turntable....with lots of beer...and lots of friends listening)

I just read this article this morning:


PORTLAND, Ore. - It was a fortuitous typo for the Fred Meyer retail chain.

This spring, an employee intending to order a special CD-DVD edition of R.E.M.'s latest release "Accelerate" inadvertently entered the "LP" code instead. Soon boxes of the big, vinyl discs showed up at several stores.

Some sent them back. But a handful put them on the shelves, and 20 LPs sold the first day.

The Portland-based company, owned by The Kroger Co., realized the error might not be so bad after all. Fred Meyer is now testing vinyl sales at 60 of its stores in Oregon, California, Washington and Alaska.



Other mainstream retailers are giving vinyl a spin too. Best Buy is testing sales at some stores. And online music giant Amazon, which has sold vinyl for most of the 13 years it has been in business online, created a special vinyl-only section last fall.

The best-seller so far at Fred Meyer is The Beatles album "Abbey Road." But musicians from the White Stripes and the Foo Fighters to Metallica and Pink Floyd are selling well, the company says.

"It's not just a nostalgia thing," said Melinda Merrill, spokeswoman for Fred Meyer. "The response from customers has just been that they like it, they feel like it has a better sound."

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats.

The resurgence of vinyl centers on a long-standing debate over analog versus digital sound. Digital recordings capture samples of sound and place them very close together as a complete package that sounds nearly identical to continuous sound to many people.

Analog recordings on most LPs are continuous, which produces a truer sound — though, paradoxically, some new LP releases are being recorded and mixed digitally but delivered analog.

Some purists also argue that the compression required to allow loudness in some digital formats weakens the quality as well.

But it's not just about the sound. Audiophiles say they also want the format's overall experience — the sensory experience of putting the needle on the record, the feeling of side A and side B and the joy of lingering over the liner notes.

"I think music products should be more than just music," said Isaac Hudson, a 28-year-old vinyl fan standing outside one of Portland's larger independent music stores.

The interest seems to be catching on. Turntable sales are picking up, and the few remaining record pressers say business is booming.

But the LP isn't going to muscle out CDs or iPod soon.

Nearly 450 million CDs were sold last year, compared with just under 1 million LPs, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Based on the first three months of this year, Nielsen says vinyl album sales could reach 1.6 million in 2008.

"I don't think vinyl is for everyone; it's for the die-hard music consumer," said Jay Millar, director of marketing at United Record Pressing, a Nashville-based company that is the nation's largest record pressing plant.

Many major artists — Elvis Costello, the Raconteurs and others — are issuing LPs and encouraging fans to check out their albums on vinyl. On Amazon, one of the best-selling LPs is Madonna's latest album, "Hard Candy".

Some artists package vinyl and digital versions of their music together, including offers for free digital downloads along with the record.

"We've definitely had some talks with the major retailers about exclusives on the manufacturing end," Millar said of United Record Pressing, which focuses primarily on independent recordings.

An avid music fan himself, Millar says he has moved to vinyl in recent years.

"Once I got my first iPod ... I'm looking at my wall of CDs and trying to justify it," Millar said. "The things I like — the artwork, the liner notes, the sound quality — it dawns on me, those are things I like better on vinyl." He welcomed back the pops and clicks, even some of the scratches.

"I like that fact that it's imperfect in a lot of ways, live music is imperfect too," Millar said.

Independent music stores, which have been the primary source of LPs in recent years, say many fans never left the medium.

"People have been buying vinyl all along," said Cathy Hagen, manager at 2nd Avenue Records in Portland. "There was a fairly good supply from independent labels on vinyl all these years. As far as a resurgence, the major labels are just pressing more now."

In this game, big retailers aren't necessarily competing head to head with independent sellers' regular clientele of nostalgic baby boomers, independent label fans and turntable DJs.

"I cannot see that Best Buy or Fred Meyer would order the same things we would," Hagen said. "They aren't going to be ordering the reggae, funk, punk or industrial music."

I wish people would get over the "CD" and "LP" thing. They are the same. Vinyl record, compact disc record. Vinyl album, CD album. Vinyl Long Player, CD Long Player. Vinyl Extended Player, compact disc Extended Player.

Record - song, single, album, CD, cassette, 8-track, 78. Etc...

Personally I like the Virgin remasters much better than the vinyl I had. But I may have had shitty vinyl records too.

<<I read an article recently claiming that today's music is made for ipods and PC speakers - and even worse mobil phones>>

Hey mofur, is it this Rolling Stone article you're thinking of?

The Death of High Fidelity: [www.rollingstone.com]

Re: Vinyl - is it really better?

No.

Many of these vinyl lovers (no offense intended, y'all) forget about the pops, hiss, etc.. Not as irritating as a CD skip, but close.

IMHO LPs are better but as stated previously, you've got to have the turntable/stereo to play them. There are many great turntables on eBay for reasonable prices. Do your homework. Vintage Dual turntables can be bought for a good price. Buy one, set it up correctly and put an upgraded needle/cartridge and they'll play for years. Go to record fairs/swap meets and buy the most pristine copies you can find. Stay away from 80's pressings. Cheap, thin vinyl. I try and stick to the Mobile Fidelity/Half Speed Master disc's. I'm not a big Boston fan but the first lp on Half Speed Master will blow the walls out. The clarity and stereo separation is mind boggling. Those Stones, Pink Floyd, Zeppelin Mobile Fidelity's can get very pricey. But god they sound great. Sticky Fingers and Some Girls on MFSL will make you throw away your cds.

Scotty

Yep, here is your chance to find out....selling off all my Stones vinyl..email privately for your wants, as I have almost everything from the London \ Decca period.

KR