Cds have more dynamic range than vinyl?

I totally agree. That's exactly the way I "feel" about it.

Take the NEMS Black Sabbath LP, listen to it, 'feel the power', it's overwhelming. Then play the CD, there is NO comparison between the two. The LP stomps the CD in 'feeling'.

I like LPs. I also like many CDs. Some CDs 'sound' much better than the LPs. With that said:

LPs seem to have the "Cosmic Energy", the "Yeah, Bash" (dynamics)!! It's barbaric, you get the 'feeling' and feel the excitement, the dynamics, the 'rush'...you get 'energized'. It's like a great live rock concert.

I can fully understand why CDs seem to sound much more 'accurate', but lack any 'getting into the sound' heavily. No "Yeah, Bash", they don't have the Rush, the feeling, they lack the 'energy'. But... some CDs 'sound' really fine! Maybe even closer to what was really recorded in the studio. I don't know. I believe that the mastering engineers tailor the music for LPs, IE, maybe not as accurate but with much more feeling applied for the LP?? Maybe not as recorded but a representation of what was recorded with an emphasis on feeling (not loudness). Something like that. ??

As the article said: For Rock & Roll only maybe (but... also for the Delta Blues too. Delta Blues LPs sound ('feel') terrific. Delta Blues CDs seem just flat. No life to them. No feeling. No "Yeah Bash". They sound generic, some just sound like cardboard. It's like I'm listening to the CDs but nothing is happening... if that makes any sense. Play the LP and A LOT is happening. Emotion.

Sorry if none of that makes any sense. lol.

Anyway...

'Outstanding article!' Learned a lot. Thank you!

 

What turntable/cartridge did you try out?

 

Nothing special. Just a Denon DP-29F. It's a Christmas present for our daughter. Got Coldplay's "AROBTTH" and Imagine Dragons "Night Visions" and they sounded OK. I played some Simple Minds, Clash, Lou Reed and Joy Division LP and a lot of them sounded a bit flat compared to their corresponding CD. I have a Yamaha DVDA/SACD/CD player that wasn't too expensive so I wouldn't expect it to make a difference when compared to the turntable. It's been a long time since I've owned a turntable so I'm sure I'm behind the curve with respect to cartridges....etc. It wouldn't be responsible for me to spend a whole lot on stereo equipment given that I'm supporting a family so consumer grade is "where it's at".

 

Dynamic range even if made use of is only 1 small piece of the puzzle.

I don't claim to have the most critical ears around, nor do I have mega buck rigs, but there's a reason I'm still into vinyl after 30+ years of CD purchasing. And that reason is not the novelty of vinyl, it's what my ears hear.

 

Yeah totally fair enough, I was just curious.

 

It always helps to define terms in this sort of debate. For example, If I were to say that CDs "sounded better than vinyl" it would be primarily for the lack of surface noise on CDs. Don't get me wrong, I have listened to LPS for 50+ years and apart from the odd LP I do not find the occasional surface noise a distraction at all.

As for revisionist history, there was at least a small minority of people who from the beginning disparaged sound of CD as sterile, 2 dimensional, and just plain irritating. Certainly the general public was (eventually) all over the format, but I would posit that this was partly due to convenience, partly to the clarity (as opposed to the quality) of the sound, and very little to do with how good they actually sounded--good here meaning the tonality, harmonics, nuance and decay of real instruments in real space that vinyl tends to better capture.

John K.

 

For some strange reason I ¨perceive¨ more dynamics (or maybe lack thereof, who knows) from lps than I do from cds. Of course I know that's impossible on paper. I enjoy the lesser stereo separation of vinyl as oppossed of that on cds (IMO excessive, feels almost as wearing headphones).

Great article by the way, thanx a lot for sharing !!

 

So, given all that we know, is it even beneficial for a cd to sound like vinyl? CD sounds like CD and I'm not sure if I've ever heard a well mastered CD reveal that evil brick wall and they definitely have got passed the point where they sounded shrill and lifeless so can they sound any better? Most of the criticism of CD was that it didn't sound like vinyl but I thought that was the point of CD at the beginning and with all the advances in technology and in the hopes that the trend that led to the loudness wars may be turning back around can CD sound better than the best sounding CD out now? Maybe CD and vinyl are as good as they can be and DSD is the only way to improve in a manner that makes financial sense seeing how SACD, DVD-A and BluRay Audio seem to be stifled a bit?

 

I'm just amazed vinyl can sound as good as CDs given the 100-year leap in technology.

 

Just another observation, My CD-R's made on either my Pioneer PDR 609 or Philips CDR-880 sound identical to the source. This is a fair test of the CD format IMO, and of course these are 1st generation copies. The commercially released CD's are not 1st generation copies. The digital master must be converted to the end user sampling rate, a step that introduces digital artifacts, or distortion, or loss of ambiance and nuance. These losses may be small, but they are audible. The stages of pressing a record are more involved and also introduce losses, especially in terms of dynamic compression in the bass range, however the openness and ambiance and detail in the recording remain intact.

I have some commercially released CD's that sound wonderful, others just flat and unexciting. The factors are the quality of the source (original masters may no longer exist) the mastering process, (eq and compression tweaking) also the sampling rate of the digital master, and finally digital conversion, (ie: 16/48 master converted to 16/44.1)

 

They're both round and flat.

It's all about the mastering, then.

 

Cd has got better dynamic range & can be impressive (I like the format & own 2500 of them) but play a well mastered/pressed LP on a properly set up turntable & Vinyl blows it away. The end!

 

How many of the masters transferred to LP have frequencies that in practice go this high though? Vinyl has a limited bandwidth - there's a reason bass has to be curtailed and mono'd prior to cutting.

 

I often mono the bass below 100hz or so when mixing in digital. More punchy!
So it works for me.

 

That's the way I feel too. I have both CD and Lp playback and I've spent tens of thousands on both ways of reproducing music over the past 25 years. I have never had trouble reproducing bass on a turntable. On the contrary most of my CD's have a pretty "weightless" sound to them. CD's don't know what bass is. My Lp's have a ton of bass, thank you. I do prefer classical music on CD though and there lies the rub: yes, CD might have a much better dynamic range, but I'm guessing the majority of us in this forum listen to predominantly popular music? Well, in my experience over the past 30 years, popular music makes little use of that technically available dynamic range. On the contrary, CD's have got worse with pretty abysmal loud mastering cropping up all over the place. Most pop music is compressed to hell and loud enough to burn your ears off through headphones.

I like CD's in general but I detest the work of the majority of people who are responsible for how poor they sound. I do not have this problem with ANY true classical CD's. So-called "cross-over" artists, and Nicola Benedetti I'm looking at you, do appear to have CD's out there that are just starting to sound a little "loud" and compressed for my ears. Why? I have no idea as "loud" doesn't suit her material at all. What is going on? The problem isn't with the media, it's the people who abuse its strengths. So until the day arrives when ALL CD's irrespective of the music on them are mastered professionally, not too loudly and with full use of the dynamic range wherever possible, I'll be buying my pop music on LP and diggin' it just fine.

 

To add to my earlier comments, I think the main issue is that pop music doesn't use that much of a dynamic range anyway so even though CD can offer more, in real sonic terms the music on either format will potentially reproduce in a similar way. The so-called limitations of vinyl are not enough to hinder most popular recordings. Factor in the better mastering of Lp's over the past 20 years compared to CD's and that's possibly why LP's almost always sound far better than their CD counterparts.

 

Whatever one thinks "sounds better" -- a purely subjective, aesthetic judgement -- there's no doubt that objectively CD does many things better than vinyl at a fundamental, technical level: it's capable of wider dynamic range, lower noise, lower distortion, there not all the enormous problems of mechanical noise that plague ALL vinyl playback to greater or lesser degrees even $20K turntables (tonearm and vinyl resonances, the various flexings of various surfaces on the device, the mass/compliance resonance, bearing rattle, motor noise, vinyl whoosh, stylus/groove friction noise, tracking distortion, groove echo) or the problems of vinyl manufacture (record eccentricity resulting in pitch instability for example), and you don't have to EQ the signal in some crazy way during manufacture to cut it to disk with the hope that the eq at the other end is going to get it perfectly right and that the whole process won't introduce any additional non-linearity and phase shift. Basically I'm continually amazed at vinyl playback sounds as good as it does.

CD of course faces the challenge of digital noise that leads to brickwall filtering above the audio a band but which may, as has sometimes been suggested, have an impact on phase response in the audible range. It's possible that there's some aspect of the continuous voltage modulation of an all analog signal chain that delivers something more "real" seeming to us vs. something build from discrete sample and pulses as has sometimes been argued (I don't know how we'd even test for that given the large number of other variables that would exist in any listening comparison), maybe it relates to CD error correction, maybe if it exists it can be improve by higher sample rates in high res digital.

In the world of audio and music we've hashed these things over for 30 years without resolving the almost religious schism. Battles between competing faiths are always unresolvable. I am not a person of faith. I'm well aware of the flaws of both, and I've also been transported listening to music via both. I think if you listen exclusively to or extensively to lots of rock and pop music, played and recorded at mezzo-forte levels and up continuously, with very little dynamic range or periods of silence in the music itself, some of the worst off the inherent problems with vinyl that draw your attention away from the music (groove echo, surface and friction noise, mechanical ringing), may be masked and less objectionable to you than if you listen to music that has long piano and pianissimo passages and wide dynamic range where finding a really quite pressing and a great vinyl playback rig is essential if you're going to enjoy the music on LP without mechanical disturbance.

 

I thought the quality of language in the post I was citing would suffice:

Said crap article including many quotes from mastering engineers highly regarded on this forum.

And yeah, I have a good turntable, a "reasonable money" turntable and over 2000 LPs. The best of those records justifies the effort. But the average LP makes me want to reach for a CD. My far less than ideal Digital playback gear is often more satisfying than analog playback. My guess is that the most ardent fans of LPs have not heard really good digital gear/recordings/playback. Or refuse to listen. The playing field is more level than not.

 

I find incredible that we still prefer records in spite of all of the above, but we still do.

 

...some of us do; some of us don't.

 

Certainly not true in my case. I've spent considerably MORE on digital in the past than I have analogue and yet I've never achieved anything close to the pure clean natural sound of a good LP in perfect condition played back on a good deck. The digital playback has always left me wanting, bereft of low frequencies, thin sounding and most importantly "mechanical sounding" and lacking that real sense of a human being in the vocal department. Classical recordings are a different story (in the main).

 

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I surely can as there is 96 db available, but often due to compression and peak limiting, CDs often had less than 30db of dynamic range, and some have even less. If you have some recording software, even audacity, you can see with your own eyes what your favorite music has for dynamic range. There is no blanket statement one can make about one being better or worse than the other. They are a creation of the engineers who worked on the project. they can keep it lively or squash the heck out of it.

 

I disagree. Does heavier, sharper, deeper bass mean better? Does hearing MORE in the mix mean better? Does more fluid natural vocals mean better? Does hearing a bigger more realistic soundstage mean better? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then the term "sounds better" can't be entirely subjective. What sounds better is obviously better to anyone with ears. It's not simply a preference to hear more of what was on the master tape, it's an indication of something that sounds better.

 

yep, and compounded by the fact we are talking about music as much (or more) than we are discussing sound waves, frequencies and scientific method. It really doesn't get any more subjective than that.
and to the subjective salad I will add, "it feels better". I can't prove that, nor can I prove that a hand written thank you note is better than a text message...but it is. Perhaps it has something to do with the dynamic range