Are vinyl records better than digital?

Are vinyl records better than digital?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem
youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM
people.xiph.org/~tterribe/opus/ietf98/dispatch-codec.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=OF6nVVA3xj8
menssociety.com/products/vinyl-records-cleaning-kit
xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
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Yes because they are analog so no bit rot

Sometimes, if digital is a victim of the loudness war.

No because of the Nyquist sampling theorem.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

This is compounded by the problem that humans cannot tell very minor sound changes introduced by lossy audio codecs and is why people can't tell the difference between 320k mp3 or 192 vbr opus and the original audio source.

Who the fuck needs an analog media if they are mastering music on their PC.

>Less dynamic range (potential)
>can't store sounds over 20khz I think
>really big, but you can digitize it (inb4 muh analog)

>really nice artwork
>looks good on display
>can feel superior for using expensive archaic format

> what is melting
> what is oxidation

this

also people forget that the engraving needles used to make records are actuated by a PWM motorized needle, even if the medium is analog, the source is still digital

are you kidding? never heard the crackling?

b-but it's part of the experience and not simply a limitation of the medium! The artist intended for me to hear distortion and crackling!

No. CDs > all.

>t. earlet who can't hear ugly highpitched ultrasonic >96khz sounds with their superhuman ears

No, but it's nice to have them around and comfy to play them when it's rainy outside and you're home from work. I bought my favorite good mood music on vinyl because it just feels nice, pic related. Next record will arrive tomorrow

Once you sample and quantizes the analog signal (to get a digital signal you need to discretize both in time and amplitude), you can never get back to the original signal. Sure, it'll be close, but never the same.

Just saying from a mathematical view.

Nice busch&jaeger reflex SI wall outlet and switch

If the original recording is analog, sure. Otherwise you're just throwing warm white noise over a cold track.

Yes but quantization noice can be replaced with dither to such a low level it's impossible to hear,and even without dither the peaks that quantizations causes are so low not to be audible anyway.

You can't compare the two. I love my Vinyl but, I have to have my digital also.

This user says it good. Something physical with moving parts and the sound is one of kind especially if you have some old ones like from the 70s.
All depends on the person

Take care of your shit and get a good turntable and the "crackling" is very minimal.

>comfy to play them when it's rainy outside and you're home from work
That does sound pretty good. There is something to actually owning great artwork and physically taking it out to play it.

Thank you. The plastic isn't pure white, it's more like a creamy color to fit better either the wooden theme of the room. The switches control the blinds and the outlet currently powers a computer I'm testing hardware with.

Of course I've also quite a nice music collection on my phone for commuting (pic related), but the physical copies really are worth it. Two of the records are signed by the artists, which isn't possible with digital media and ugly on cd. Not trying to brag here, they were quite cheap.

No. I'm old. I know.

As far as audio quality? Not even close. Less range, degrades with each use, dust can negatively impact sound, ect.

The only benefit to vinyl is that the size is nice is nice for artwork.

but muh analog and dynamic range (which is one of the few things going for it)

depends on the recording and what you mean by "better", if it's an old ass recording that has never been remastered for digital then a clean vinyl copy sounds better. It's pretty much the only scenario where it's objectively the case though

Vinyl:

1. static
2. dust
3. crust
4. groove rips
5. warp
6. rotation flutter
7. susceptibility to physical vibration
8. can't play it in a moving car
9. large footprint

only dumbasses chose vinyl

Nice bait.

Objectively no.

I people had proper DACs, dynamic range wouldn't be an issue. But muh audiophile snake oil meme

Vinyl is only really relevant today as a novelty.

It was popular for many years because it was the cross section between ease of use/handling and sound quality.
Reel to reel tapes were generally superior in audio quality, but were more susceptible to physical damage, harder to find, more expensive, and more cumbersome to use.

Vinyl is popular today not because of it's audio quality (45's were better than 33's, R2R beat them all), but because of it's aesthetic.
People like the big albums with art and the fun of playing a record. For top quality we have lossless digital methods.

At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I find the effort involved in actually placing the record on the turntable can allow you to appreciate the music just a little more than selecting it from a filesystem.

Also, physically holding the album art in that size and looking at it while listening to the record puts a new dynamic into the experience. It feels a little more "human"

In terms of sound quality, relatively high bitrate audio running through a mostly digital sound system is better.

Vinyl records are just a novelty technology, but I personally enjoy the novelty sometimes.

This is the proper way to approach it.
The people who fall for "muh audiophile" meme and defend vinyl as the gold standard for audio quality are deluded.

It's the same thing as how people actually tend to appreciate things that they paid for more than free ones, even if the free thing is better.
By going through the motions of cueing an album on the turntable, you commit to it in a way, so it's more meaningful than flipping through songs in your digital library.

>Want to make a "decent to high quality" (I know quality is subjective when it comes to this and is not as straight forward as setting up EAC and popping in a CD) rip of a rare vinyl I bought on the cheap so I don't have to potentially ruin the vinyl itself just from listening to it a few times
>"Never buy those USB record players, they're fucking shit"
>Don't want to buy $2k worth of equipment just to rip a single vinyl
Goddamnit. I wish I knew someone who would let me borrow their shit for maybe an hour or so.

If you have a decent turntable, then the only thing you really need is a decent ADC. A not-half-bad behringer unit is like $30 on amazon.

The USB turntables are shit because they take a cheap as fuck turntable then add some low-quality ADC and call it a day, so your shit ends up sounding like a cassette tape recorded off the radio.

Are there any turntables you would recommend?

Not really, the medium is objectively inferior. However, there are a lot of records on LP which are superior to their digital counterparts simply due to mastering, or perhaps they have less dynamic compression or something. It's unfortunate, but brickwalling is a disgustingly common pratice on many CDs. Thankfully there are plenty of very well done LP transfers on the internet, so there's very often an option for you to just skip out on the CD version if the LP version is superior (as an example UK original pressings of Pink Floyd often sound much easier on the ears than a great majority of modern remasters, be it due to bad remastering decisions, or decay of the original masters)

A properly set up high quality record player with clean records and a good audio system creates a warmth that is unparalleled. The poorfags of Sup Forums will never experience the audio bliss. That being said it is impractical in many ways.

I personally collect vinyl. I own over $10k worth but most of my collection is centered around my personal favorite albums and rare pressings. If you use a high quality turntable, a high quality stylus, proper anti-static cleaning products and anti-static sleeves for storage of your records the sound quality is not diminished.

It's an expensive hobby but worth it if you like spinning records. Most of the time playing an mp3 is easier and most normies will shit on it when they have never experienced it.

vinyl is basically mp3 128k which constantly degrades with plays (assuming it uses a stylus)

Vinyls are numale memes

It *will* be exactly the same, he talks about the point you're trying to make at 6:25

youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM

Audiophiles BTFO

It's not about the DAC. Vinyl usually gets a different (better) mixing and mastering than the digital format or CD.

>a good audio system

post a pic of your audio system so i can laugh, too

Audiophile arguments aside, it's just a nice thing to have for music special to you. Maybe it sounds kind of like a hipster thing to still buy vinyl records, but I like them.

If by digital we take 44KHz CD, we would have about 2-3 samples only for higher audible frequencies (close to 20KHz). While 2 are enough to reconstruct a sinusoidal wave according to the sample theorem, in practice the resulting wave would not be a high fidelity representation of the original waves. In some cases vinyl could reproduce these frequencies better.

If we take 192Khz sampled digital audio, then there is no way for vinyl to be better at all in this regard.

>t. jealous poorfag

Literally my favorite album of all time.

what are you willing to spend?

...

It depends on your point of view. In terms of strictly analog recordings and productions, the information lost via digital remastering is miniscule but the point is, information is lost. Some people like the idea they are lisenting to a pure analog recording where there are no digital nasties between them and the artist. It's especially important if you're an audiophile with the equipment that is resolving enough to reveal such nuances. But then again, there are too many variables to say which is "better", since they're are brilliant, high res digital recordings and equipment that are accurate and tonally pleasing enough to where the actual recording and analog outout signal are near identical. It also comes down to the mastering itself, and sometimes vinyl gets a much more careful mastering job than its CD counterpart.

If we were to go head to head with the absolute best TT/amp/speaker rig in the world vs the best dac/amp/speaker, digital might have an edge in overall accuracy, but vinyl would win in tonal realism. But the difference is so subtle, its basically preferences at that point since you'll find the best in both with either. Like I said, some older and old
soul audiphiles like the idea of having nothing digital between them and the artist, even if its just in the playback stage since a lot of shit is digitally mixed and stored these days.

Once you're playing the record even once, the wear of the needle means you can never get back to the original signal. Sure, it'll be close, but never the same.

>It depends on your point of view. In terms of strictly analog recordings and productions, the information lost via digital remastering is miniscule but the point is, information is lost.
Uh, just having the signal travel over a wire technically loses information-- unless it's digital.

Do you know how much loss is imposed by a modern 24 bit DAC? About equal to running the signal through a 100 ohm resistor.

Obviously this one: people.xiph.org/~tterribe/opus/ietf98/dispatch-codec.pdf

>degrades with each use
You're confusing dubplates with vinyl user, as long as you look after you're records and set you're turntables weight etc, you should't be degrading anything

>worlds
My nigga

I just use an iPod Shuffle.

If you have excellent ears and audio equipment you definately can tell the difference between FLAC and mp3 though.

It doesn't fucking help when they keep squishing the dynamic range every CD reissue. I mean come on, taking Jimi Hendrix from 14 to 7 is just insulting.

>not listening to Windowlicker at 33 1/3 RPM
why even live?
youtube.com/watch?v=OF6nVVA3xj8

Kinda OP but you set up some big bait by not defining what level of quantisation you meant by "digital" so I will share a few points

-16bit red book is 30 year old tech and can be bettered
- Most CD's are mastered like shit and victim to the loudness war
- Most modern Hi-res is still mastered like shit - I just got Lana Del Ray Lust for Life the other day in 24/44.1 and it had a DR of 6 !!!!
- Usually I find Vinyl or 24bit Vinyl Rips to be be more carefully mastered and sound better because of the signal path and the loudness war

It's a fucking mine field but It's my hobby and I wouldn't have collected 2TB+ of lossless hi-res if it wasn't superior.

I have personally left out sample rates. >96 is just a meme and eats up HDD space. I could spend the rest of my life happily listening to 24/48 lossless that's as good as it gets IMHO... Also funny Steve Jobs and Apple capped iPhones at 24/48...

So Tldr; 24 bit is a thing - most vinyl has a 24 bit master and Mastering and the loudness war has the end say about how a release should sound. A lot of good and bad decisions have been made over the years - hence why people chase different formats.

>Having Oxides in your Atmosphere

Fucking Subhuman

What's wrong with worlds?

Wrong. Enjoy the space-hogging placebos shitting up your hard drive.

usually the mastering done for vinyl records is of better quality due to the limits of the medium.

then there's the album covers, inserts, and of course the caressing of the record itself, which makes it a more thoughtful process, and so i enjoy the music more.

if you're only talking about the audio quality, it depends on your setup, and the mastering/type of vinyl.

I enjoy listening to vinyl records more than I do listening to my audio player, but that's just a preference, I don't think there's a definitive way to factually measure which is better.

Not him, but I think flac is great for long term storage, I case a better codec comes along and you want to have all your music in the new format without quality loss

This.

I experimented with oscillators and listening to the resultant tones between them doing sweeps etc. and 44kHz was like a brick wall filter.

music enjoyment is subjective. I find for some music, like 70s rock that was intended for release on vinyl it sounds better (led zeppelin and black sabbath cd remasters sound like shit comparatively, this might be because the lower dynamic range of the vinyl fucks the sound up enough so that you don't here the imperfections of the recording enough). There is also some music produced these days that are intended for vinyl. there is a difference for sure, technically its worse, subjectively it is pointless arguing.

>Yes because they are analog so no bit rot
Can't argue with that but you missed out all the bad stuff vinyl offers.

It's my favourite album of all time. Really like Galantis and OW too.

VINYL

And make sure you keep it clean or it sounds shit. Grab one of these: menssociety.com/products/vinyl-records-cleaning-kit

WOW this guy

Decent answers never get a (You) on Sup Forums but i am giving you one

what rig is that ?

Bitch, you don't know shit.
xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml

Signori teste di cazzo, ecco la vostra sinusoide!

Well, I also listen to ODESZA, EDEN and said the sky. Further recommendations: The Asteroids Galaxy tour and Make Acid. What can you recommend?

>- Most CD's are mastered like shit and victim to the loudness war

Don't listen to shit music. Classical a genre that's always mastered pretty well.

>keeping the shrinkwrap on instead of buying proper outer sleeves
Are you insane?

Grazie per il kek gratuito

Not really but they are more fun to smoke a blunt and listen to with friends than a phone.

If you hear crackling your record is dirty or your stylus is shit.

or it's static, which means your turntable or phonoamp isn't grounded

Proper outer sleeves are nice but not super necessary, especially not on a $15 record that's easy to get on Amazon.

If this was one of my limited pressings like my Dan Terminus Wrath of Code album that only had 200 pressed total, 65 of which are in the US/Canada 135 in Europe then yeah I would have it in a nice ass sleeve to protect it.

This. The main appeal of vinyl is the experience of it, not the sound quality. Also, it can be fun and rewarding to build up a collection.

I know a lot of people will think the "experience" is just a burden, and I can understand that - but in that case just accept vinyl isn't for you. There's no need to knock others if they enjoy it.

Also, it's worth mentioning there are very few vinyl purists out there. Most of us understand the benefits of digital mediums and will have digital copies of their music also.

>muh 200
Outer sleeves aren't even that expensive, why spare the costs on those if you're going to buy gimmick splatter pressings and act like they're special? I have that album too but you know damn well Blood Music limits their pressings to make them sell quickly.

>will force you to actually listen to whole albums because of lack of playback control
>comes with all kinds of goodies and stuff like artworks, lyrics, info
>it actually exists, unlike these so called "bits and bytes" and other volatile abstractions like "mp3" and "digital album"
These are the real reason why vynil is superior.
Sound quality is a fucking meme and placebophile need to be culled.

nothing he said was incorrect.

This is all stuff you guys should have learned in your undergrad program. I know I did.

>dude I am so smart I listen to "classical" music
>timeline of over 200 years
>considers it to be a single genre of music
kill yourself

>He doesn't know how to master the needle

you need to be forced to listen to a whole album?
I am sure you are only using vinyl for image/street cred.

This, downloaded a Slipknot album 2 months ago as Mp3 CBR 320 kbps, check it today and the fucking files are now VBR V2

No, I'm using it precisely to stop myself from compulsively micro-managing tracks and jumping to 4-5 second bits of audio from this and that track to play them at least 45 times over and over.
Vynil helps a lot, especially if you study or make music. Otherwise, you end up being an autistic analyzer instead of listening.

what is 'vynil', user?

Kek, fucking phone keyboards

if thats the actual reasons, then vinyl fucking sucks and you are an autist
oh, wait, you are

Then don't buy it
But I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of people having the same issue as me, although not as bad, possibly without even knowing that they would benefit from the vinyl approach
The placebophile are the real autists

Great album. I don't have a vinyl player though

Can you please post ABX tests verifying your statement or are you just talking out of your ass like most audiophiles?

turntable/record player

>Are vinyl records better than digital?

The guy seen in this webm is offended that you pick one over the other. He appreciates the nuances and subtleties in the sound that both vinyl and digital provide. He can distinguish between 320k, 192k, and 44k, but he chooses no favorites because they are all his favorites. And if you disagree, it's because you have ears but you don't know how to use them.

>incoherent babble

Nice hot opinions there Cleetus.

Ordinary CD has just 16 bits of resolution. It means that the audio signal can only have 65536 different states.
The resolution of vinyl is infinite, the audio signal can have infinite number of states.

You're full of shit, let's see a double blind first.

No it doesn't and even if it did it wouldn't make a difference to us. Otherwise 320k mp3 rips wouldn't be so popular.

This is the same reason we transcode video with a lossy encoder and don't complain when movies are GB instead of 1,000 GB.

Source to that video?