Cds have more dynamic range than vinyl?

Sorry if this has already been covered but here's quite an interesting article about CD's. It has some quite estimable figures in it.

So is their any truth to the thread title? Are they including SACD's in this?


http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-better-than-vinyl-5352162

 

CDs definitely have a bigger dynamic range capability than vinyl.

 

If the mastering engineers and their producer clients leave them alone. Too often of late, they do not.

 

Great article. All the reasons I quit buying vinyl 30-some years ago.

 

CDs have greater dynamic range than vinyl, but it doesn't mean the album will have greater dynamic range on CD. Very few album these days take full advantage of the CD's dynamic range. Also, just because an album has large dynamic range on CD doesn't mean it will sound good on CD.

 

Yeah I buy vinyl because the original masters of albums are usually better than the CD remasters, not because vinyl is inherently a better technology.

 

Not trying to be a narc but this does not belong in music, but rather the hardware sub forum.

 

Good example of theory and practice being separate things.

 

Six pages of offenders:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/search/23023411/?q=loudness wars&o=relevance&c[title_only]=1&c[node]=2

 

One of the reasons I enjoy vinyl more is because of the (what I perceived to be) better dynamics. Take for example 'Since i've been loving you' by Zeppelin. It sounds incredible on the vinyl copies i've got(a classic and an early dutch one) but average on the CD i've got.

This happens quite a bit for me. Perhaps it's my taste (a lot of 60's stuff) where quality was habitually neglected on Cd's.

Could anyone recommend some good CD's highlight their superior dynamic range please?

Something good like!

 

Midnight Oil-Diesel and Dust
Pick your format, they both rock!

 

Merci!

 

The MOD's don't get paid enough it seems Mr Hoffman give those folks a raise and increase the staff!

 

Crime of the Century MFSL CD has some of the highest dynamics of any pop/rock recording I've heard.

 

Here's my take on this... CDs have always sounded better than vinyl. Vinyl may sound "warmer", or whatever you choose to call it, but as far as dynamic range and clarity (all things being equal) they are inferior to CDs. I didn't read the whole article, but in the beginning, the author talks about how CDs were "never cool" and how from the beginning "the format was plagued by accusations that its sound was inferior, that it was merely a convenient alternative to the LP."... I think this is a bit of revisionist history. I recall how most everyone in the general public was very excited by the advent of the CD and how great they sounded... people were rushing out to replace their aging vinyl collections with the new technology and giving away all their vinyl or selling it for pennies on the dollar. I'm not saying that one format is better than the other, I personally enjoy both formats. Ideally, I would have mint copies of all the music in my collection in the format that was dominant at the time the album was released... so anything from the 60's, 70's and early 80's on vinyl and anything after that on CD... again, all things being equal (mastering etc.).

 

Of course CD's are inherently capable of delivering wider dynamic range than vinyl... That's a 30 year old fact that LA Weekly is just discovering? As others have noted, the irony of the last 20 or 30 years of music is that just as we've gotten storage and playback media athat can deliver enormous dynamic range -- first CD now high res digital -- we've developed the common pop music practice of squeezing the masters to like 6 dB of dynamic range! Weird how that happened. But that has nothing to do with the medium. That's about engineering and production choices.

 

Anything poorly mastered that sounds bad on CD will sound worse on vinyl, which reproduces sound less accurately. Unless of course it is remastered, in which case it can be remastered to CD as well.

 

Not the remaster!!!!!

 

Nice. Also check out "Earth and Sun and Moon" which sounds amazing. The Call's "Reconciled", U2 "Zooropa", Ministry "With Sympathy".

We recently picked up a new Denon Turntable for our daughter and bought a few vinyl albums for her so I've listened to those as well as my own vinyl collection from the late 70's-early 80's and the vinyl just sounds dead compared to many of the same albums on CD. I think Redbook has great potential and to McLover's point, when done right I think there's no comparison. I consider myself very fortunate that the CD came on the scene when I was in the prime of my music exploration.

 

Excuse my ignorance but what does "Redbook" mean? I have seen it quite a bit in these forums and I am guessing it's a type of CD but.......

 

Yes, the CD format is capable of greater dynamic range than phonograph records.

 

It's the name of the specification of the compact disc... but when someone says redbook it's another way of saying CD.

 

News flash! It's also capable of much lower noise (which of course also relates to the higher dynamic range) and distortion! Also, since the LA Weekly has discovered old facts about technology as news let 'em also know that, no, the Titanic was not unsinkable and manned spaceflight to the moon might actually work too.