Cds have more dynamic range than vinyl?

One thing that isn't mentioned yet: I like to play my Chic CD's and dance next to them without making the music skip.


Let's all hope that the music industry will at one point return to non-brickwalled mastering for CD's. Can't wait. Not much new music enters my home, lately.

 

It was audiophiles who first embraced CDs, specifically for the longer playing time, wider dynamic range and lack of background noise, qualities which were tremendous boons for classical music reproduction.

 

You mean to say recordings of a wide dynamic range that have many episodes where pitch must be stable. In other words, recordings that display the inherent limits of any record/playback process. As long as a recording is not particularly challenging, LPs can display qualities that most digital playback gear doesn't, many find that difference desirable. But with any music of wide dynamic range and long held pitches, LPs have real, audible issues that CDs do not.

 

I'm not even sure what "heavier, sharper" bass means. Or "fluid natural vocals." Those characterizations are entirely subjective, they mean something to you that they may not mean to me, if they mean anything to me at all. "Deeper bass" I understand -- it means lower in frequency, that you can measure: are you getting more lower frequency energy with one playback scheme or another? But if you're talking about your listening perception of deeper, that may or may not be measurable, again, there's something inherently subjective and personal in that. I think often bigger soundstages are the result of poor phase performance and don't reflect what's actually on the master....a bigger soundstage isn't necessarily a better or more realistic soundstage, so always getting a bigger soundstage from one component or playback scheme vs. another I don't think is clear evidence of always getting better or closer to the master performance out of that device, and you can't know from sitting at home listening to your system if what you're hearing is the same as what's on the mater tape. You have to have also heard the master tape to know that. All responses based only on listening are subjective. Any judgement about what's best that's based on the same is also subjective and personal.

 

That sort of sums it up I suppose but I'd also add that CD offers a level of transparency that vinyl can't always achieve. As an aside I see nowadays that the newest high performance t/tables achieve a level of transparency previously thought to be the preserve of CD and not all vinyl-philes share the enthusiasm for this. A dealer told me that the better vinyl is getting, the more it sounds like digital and he wasn't being ironic either! I'm not sure I have any classical Lp's that are capable of highlighting faults in my turntable but I do have many classical CD's that show how incredible CD's can sound when mastered properly. Very few non-classical CD's sadly achieve this level though.

 

Vinyl sounds more musical than CDs mostly because a 16 bit format is not adequate to capture all the info of the waveform.CD CAN sound very good/musical but if played on very good (very expensive equipment)

 

I agree for definite where popular music is concerned but I've never read / heard a convincing argument put forward by anyone yet as to why this should be the case so conclusively. However, with classical recordings CD and digital really comes into its own and therefore I doubt it's the 16 bits that are causing the issue with pop CD's.

 

Yeah,they are.Otherwise there would be no noticeable improvement in 24/96 and 24/192 digital.

 

Interesting article and responses. Assuming that the CD format has better potential than vinyl, the fact that the majority of the industry isn't utilizing it makes me go automatically to vinyl. Of course, there is poorly mastered vinyl, but when I see what these reissue labels have put out/are putting out (Analogue Productions, Mofi, Music Matters, ORG, DCC, Classic), I will choose vinyl every time.

(Note: I grew up in the mp3-generation)

 

I think this is exactly right. If each format is improving -- i.e., getting better at delivering what's encoded on the disk without adding or subtracting anything -- they should each be sounding more alike, given identical disk masters.

 

I find the opposite to be true....at the budget end of the scale I think the mechanical noises and coloration of inexpensive vinyl playback tend to be so gross, and the frequency response peaks and rolloffs with a lot of budget MM's loaded by typical phono stages seem so far from neutral in the top two octaves, that I think budget CD tends to sound much better than budget vinyl.

 

without question. as far as bang for your buck, CD's are the hands down winner. I often see "starter" kits for sale at record stores that are a pair of speakers and a table for $150. The sound on this couldn't come close to any CD player.

 

Unfortunately I can't access the article. Chinese filters. But anyhoo. This is not a simple question with a simple answer. Sadly it often is presented as a simple question with a simple answer. On paper, or in theory Red book CD has a substantially wider dynamic range than LP. But in practice things get a little muddy. The measure of signal to noise is a simple thing, again in theory, with digital media. One problem in comparing it to analog media is for some reason the massive distortion at low signal levels that happens with digital gets a pass and so the "noise" end of the spectrum is given more credit than is due with all things digital. The other things that can't be over looked is the nature and effect of noise of vinyl. It is very frequency related and we can hear very deep below the noise floor through out most of the frequency spectrum. So in practice the true practical dynamic range of CD v. vinyl is much closer than in theory. Almost the same. BUT...it gets even more complicated. The *perceived* dynamics of a recording cut to vinyl and to CD from the same signal will be greater on the vinyl due to inherent colorations in vinyl. So, all else being equal vinyl will sound more dynamic than CD.

 

That has not been my experience.

 

1. You are comparing 24 bit signal to vinyl. Not entirely fair since the question was CD v. vinyl.
2. If one seeks practical examples of any media handling the dynamics of classical music then I would point to the Classics 45 rpm issue of the Mercury recording of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. I have yet to hear any recording on any commercial digital medium that captures the low level detail of the sound of an orchestra and the full power of the orchestra playing at full tilt as well as these four discs.
3. If we are worried about surface noise of vinyl what are we to do with the ambient noise of live concerts? I can't say that I find the surface noise of a well made LP to be all that intrusive, even on the quietest passages. OTOH I have many a CD that presents a very unnatural quietness that I actually find intrusive. Noise, be it surface noise, tape hiss or even audience noise comes in many flavors and sizes. It's pretty hard for me to draw a single hard line in the sand on the subject of noise.

 

[QUOTE="...So, all else being equal vinyl will sound more dynamic than CD.[/QUOTE]
Not sure about that based on my experience, but OK. Listening is subjective and while a very, very good Lp playback system can have huge dynamic swings, there are some well recorded and mastered CDs that are almost incredibly powerful in that regard. I find that the colorations of vinyl decrease dynamic range a bit as they mask some of the signal with noise. But, I see your point in that certain cuts can also emphasize a particular frequency, making a few tracks sound more dynamic, when I doubt that they are in fact. And this is coming from a long time Lp collector and someone who listens to more Lp than CD.
-Bill

 

Colouration from the combined effects of the riaa process (changes HAVE to be made to the audio), stylus profile, stylus tracking weight, reduced L/R stereo image which ironically often makes the centre sound more 'solid', the fact the needle and cantilever is vibrating (creating a very slight micro-echo) cartridge design, deck design, arm design, arm geometry, cartridge alignment, phono stage loading, etc. etc. In short EVERY variable in vinyl playback introduces unavoidable colourations. Fortunately they are mostly pleasant combined, bar the occasional click/pop or a noisy pressing. These distortions sound musical to many, myself included. But lets not delude ourselves this is the sound of accuracy or a 'superior' medium. A well mastered CD recording of an LP can sound JUST like the LP. LP is enjoyable & muscal, but if all CDs were as well mastered as DCCs, MoFis etc from day 1, I'd very gladly have given up on LP...

 

It's not really strange. It has a very straight forward technical explanation. There are inherent colorations in vinyl that make loud passages sound louder and fuller. It may not be as "accurate" but it sure sounds great though. Makes me happy. Especially since dynamics are generally one the things that recording and playback tend to do damage the most.

 

But, I agree; they are not.
-Bill

 

That is fine but please keep in mind that I said "all else being equal." If you are comparing different recordings then clearly not all else is equal.

 

I get that, but let's also remember that the same recording can be mastered differently for Lp than for vinyl, so all else is never equal.
-Bill

 

Rarely but not never. (sorry for the gross use of a double negative) We do have a few examples of CDs and LPs that were mastered identically. One of my favorites for comparisons is the Performance Recording Pictures at an Exhibition comparison package. Both the LP and CD were mastered from the same exact unaltered signal off of the analog master tape. The CD also contains an unaltered transfer of the digital recording made off of the same feed as the analog recording.

 

Nonsense. Black Sabbath's 13 sounds like crap on CD, sounds great on vinyl. Vinyl rip of 13 to digital also sounds great. The CD mastering for that title just happens to be brickwalled crap, but the LP is not.

 

I think that this statement is a good example of why the attempt to persuade those who strongly favor vinyl that digital may, even if in only one respect, actually sound better is futile. I've listened with pleasure to old (20s-30s), noisy blues recordings for decades, and have not felt the need to have that noise removed (as in the case of Pristine's Robert Johnson issues)---because I'm accustomed to it and, perhaps, because the noise in those old recordings offers a certain charm for those of us who appreciate the historical aspect of the recordings---but with all due respect to Scott's aesthetics, and despite the fact that I enjoy the sound of vinyl, I would never find the quietness of the playback medium itself to be a problem. In any event, and personal idiosyncrasies aside, I don't think that it can be argued that the quietness of digital media is actually a bad thing, as if the minimization of non-musical noise should not be a goal of musical reproduction.

 

I love vinyl, but I have to ask, in what sense can the terms "pure" and "clean" be applied to the sound of vinyl?