[ndeast]

I collect a significant amount of new vinyl and listen to it relatively frequently, but digital music is so much more convenient. That can be a detriment though, I find a lot of the value I get out of listening to vinyl is the "intentional listening" experience. I think Henry Rollins called it carbohydrate listening or something to that effect, listening to things you like that you've heard a million times and isn't exactly stimulating in the same way a new album or artist would be. Music feels a whole lot more consumable and disposable when its just on constant instant playback. Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.

All that to say I mostly just like collecting colored vinyl, and supporting small bands and artists you like by buying a product significantly more profitable than millions of Spotify streams is pretty cool.

[manaskarekar]

Thanks for making the Henry Rollins' carbohydrate reference. It's a great way to label these two modes of listening that we all experience.

----

"I have two basic food groups of music: protein and carbohydrate.

The protein listening is new music, where it’s unfamiliar to me so I’m listening, sometimes taking notes, researching the band while the music is playing. I do quite a bit of this, usually during the week.

On the weekends, I will allow for some carbohydrate listening, which would be records I’m familiar with, that I’ve been playing for years. This music is not exactly background, but more of an environmental asset for elevation of mood."

https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/henry-rollins-food-groups...

[endorphine]

It's exactly the same for me. Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup.

That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.

[eru]

> Yes, vinyl is more inconvenient, expensive and may even sound "worse" unless you have an expensive audio setup.

Well, the objective sounds quality is always _worse_ than eg CDs. (In the same sense that lower mp3 bitrate is always worse in some objective sense.)

But often the sound engineering and mixing is done more carefully for vinyl; and aesthetically you can prefer whatever you like.

[lloeki]

A '63 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT is objectively worse than the latest VW Golf GTI by every measurable metric.

The driving experience, though, is completely different. There's some "grin factor" raw-ness, some analog-ness to the former that makes the latter comparatively feel like a muted couch-on-wheels.

[ummonk]

Not really analogous. No matter how much you tune the GTI's ECU, throttle curve, ESC, etc., you won't be able to precisely replicate the handling of the classic car, though you might get close.

By contrast, one can digitally capture the output of a turntable + phono preamp and then store it, share it, and replay it with all the crackle and warmth of the original in perfect fidelity without ever having to touch the record again.

[voldacar]

Vinyl isn't about crackle or warmth. Good vinyl rigs are usually not warm. It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.

[speed_spread]

Unpopular opinion: Vinyl is not really about the sound. The sound is different, Yes, but that's not it. Vinyl is about displaying the cover, pulling the disc out of it, feeling the weight of the object as you align it on the turntable, pushing the button and watch it spin up, then delicately drop the needle at the right place. Vinyl involves a _ritualistic_ consensual experience which modern medium entirely lack. You can share your appreciation of the cover art and printed lyrics with other people in the room while the music plays. There's no distraction or suggestion coming from a computer screen. When the music stops, what happens is entirely up to you. Vinyl lets you feel the void and puts you entirely in control of the listening session.

[least]

> Vinyl isn't about crackle or warmth.

It kind of is because you don't have an even frequency response throughout the vinyl. The closer to the center, the less high frequency response you get. Also higher frequencies in general require the cutting needle to to move faster and can introduce unpleasant distortion into the record, so you might attenuate higher frequencies on a vinyl record that you wouldn't need to for the streaming/radio/cd mix.

> It's about the fact that vinyl physically cannot support a super compressed mix.

This is false. Vinyl's physicality limits its dynamic range. If you have too high of an amplitude the cuts in the vinyl will be deeper and depending on the track could lead to the needle literally jumping off the player creating skipping. A super compressed mix doesn't create issues, a heavily limited one does. Clipping and brickwall limiting create problems for vinyls and introduce unpleasant distortion. You can still have a very compressed track on vinyl.

If a vinyl mix ends up with more dynamic range than the CD mix, it's because it was an active choice made by the mixing/mastering engineers, not because vinyl can't handle compressed mixes. In fact due to avoiding limiting as much as possible, you'll encounter plenty of cases where there is less dynamic range due to added compression to bring out the detail in quieter sections.

[strangetortoise]

Forgive my ignorance: I thought it was the other way around, and you needed some relatively high amount of compression on a vinyl master, since otherwise the grooves would swing too wildly, and the needle would have a higher chance of "skipping". Is this an incorrect understanding of mine?

[eru]

And that's exactly what I said originally:

> [...] often the sound engineering and mixing is done more carefully for vinyl; [...]

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Vinyl also has no low end to speak of. Hence the RIAA curves which define how the low end is stripped out before cutting, and "restored" during playback. If you ever get a chance, listen to some vinyl on gear that can have the RIAA curves defeated/disengaged.

[throwaway2037]

Do vinyl and CDs of the exact same album have different mixes? I find this very hard to believe, or the amount of human involvement must be very low -- software automation. My point: In 2023, what record label could defend the cost of expensive audio engineers to remix an album just for vinyl. The realized, absolute profits on vinyl must be tiny at this point. And when I wrote profit, I do not mean profit margin, which will be very large on small sales revenue

[howLongHowLong]

I'm a professional musician who makes a good portion of my "living" selling recorded music. You use the same mix for all mediums but need to master differently for vinyl. (Mix refers to levels of individual microphones, mastering is the frequency levels of the finished mix) I'm sure some people master different for digital outlets, but we don't. Regarding profitability,it's so much easier to sell vinyl than cds it's a challenge keeping them in stock, and pretty much every vinyl plant on earth is backlogged right now. Also the return of an lp vs. spotify is orders of magnitude higher; our Spotify income is barely quantifiable. (maybe bc we didn't specially master for it ha?)

[chiph]

Usually, yes. Albums have the RIAA curve applied. CDs typically do not, except for many of those produced in the mid-1980's when the studios were producing CDs as fast as they could and didn't want to spend the time to remaster a recording for the flat response of the CD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

The problem in the 1980s was they were starting with master tapes that already had the RIAA equalization whereas today the masters are digital and don't. So for a modern title the RIAA curve would be added for a tape to be sent to the lathe, and probably would be done when the signal is analog.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc2LA9kC-4U

[shagie]

One of the phenomena of some records is that excessive bass can cause the needle to jump out of the groove.

Tchaikovsky*, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Erich Kunzel – 1812 : https://www.discogs.com/release/2205254-Tchaikovsky-Cincinna...

> Amazing recording! The sonic mastering on this one is outstanding. Make sure you have your stylus and needle prepared for the canon blasts in the 1812 overture! Take a look at how wide the grooves are near the end of Side 1! I had to adjust my tone-arm weight so the needle didn't get thrown off the track or skip. This is a great listen and sounds amazing.

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/mccartney-and-old-time-need... also has some discussion about the mixing of bass for records.

So there are very real reasons why a record would have a different mix than a CD.

[kbutler]

This appears to be one more real reason why vinyl is objectively worse than a CD.

[denton-scratch]

> Do vinyl and CDs of the exact same album have different mixes?

Certainly sometimes. In fact probably always - you can't just take analogue masters and dump them to digital - you have to do at least some mixing and filtering.

As a single datapoint, Frank Zappa's Hot Rats was remixed for CD; I hated the CD remix, which I thought was too harsh (I'm not the only person who felt that way). Also, there are differences in the actual music: the intro to Gumbo Variations, for example, is a couple of bars longer in the CD remix than the original vinyl.

I've got used to the CD remix now, and I appreciate the extended into to Gumbo Variations.

[Edit] Am I the only person that found the article impossible to read, because it was jiggling around so fast?

[regularjack]

I think typically there's only one mix, but there will be as many masters as the mediums you're targetting: one master for CD, one for Spotify, one for vinyl, etc.

[jefftk]

What would you do differently mastering for a CD versus Spotify?

(I'm in the middle of releasing an album, and we don't have different masters for these, but I could imagine that the situation is different for more professional groups)

[ummonk]

Spotify compresses it anyway but for digital audio you'd want to encode in 48 kHZ/24 bit whereas CD only supports 44.1 kHZ/16 bit. Anyone who can hear the difference would be an exceptional listener with an exceptional sound system though, at least assuming the masters are generated with proper dithering.

[usrusr]

The mixes are optimized to a different set of constraints. (Or they should be, chances are much of the collectibles for modern music are just bad vinyl pressings of the mix for digital.) It's not "more careful mixes", the digital one will likely have seen just as much care or more, but the analog one can strike compromises between dynamics and minor distortion that the digital simply can't. Because all digital distortion is major distortion and avoided at all costs. That's why the mix for digital usually throws far more dynamics under the bus to achieve loudness than the mix for analog.

A CD version of the vinyl mix would sound great, but you'd be surprised how silent it is if you leave your amp at the usual setting.

[worrycue]

> The mixes are optimized to a different set of constraints.

From what I heard, a lot of vinyls are just recorded from CD. No source, just a YouTube video a long time ago so take it with a grain of salt.

> Because all digital distortion is major distortion and avoided at all costs.

Not a signal processing expert but from what I read, all the quantization noise is pushed into the >20kHz frequencies where it can't be heard via dithering/noise shaping.

Loudness/compression is a deliberate choice and has nothing to do with noise.

[usrusr]

What i meant with digital distortion is what happens when your levels leave the good regions: on vinyl, the resulting distortion will gently ramp in. The medium keeps representing those higher levels, just not very well. A good vinyl mix will consider allowing some of that the lesser evil over achieving the same amount of general loudness with more dynamics compression.

The clipping you'd get in the digital realm however isn't gentle or subtle at all and the levels beyond the good range simply don't exist. That's a hard no-go.

Quantization noise is an entirely different non-beast. Loudness/compression has everything to do with it. Yes, sometimes ccompression is also employed as an intentional creative element, but that's not even the tip of the ice berg.

I do agree with the suspicion that many vinyl pressings these days are just pressings of the CD mix. But this has everything to do with business and nothing with technology. It's a shame that back when the industry went through that phase of experimenting with formats beyond 2x16@44.1, they did not do a multichannel format with one stereo pair holding the loudness-optimized mix for radio, driving and the like, and another pair shifted 48dB lower to add more headroom. (or 24dB, to allow half of the additional bits of a 16 -> 24 expansion to go to where people usually expect it)

[worrycue]

As mentioned I’m not an expert but what kind of distortions can there be in properly mastered 16 bit 44.1kHz PCM? I know there is distortion from quantisation but that’s a solved problem with dithering and noise shaping, no?

Clipping is just bad mastering, no?

I also find it hard to believe that vinyl will have less distortion as it’s analog where physical imperfections in the medium will affect the sound far more than in the case of digital mediums like CDs - with the latter it’s either a 1 or a 0; as long as wear and tear / damage doesn’t flip a 1 to a 0 or vice versa, you are good (and even if you do get a flip, ECC will normally fix it).

Vinyl also has it own set of restrictions with the frequencies it can reproduce and dynamic range since it’s all encode physically as tiny groves with bumps on the vinyl.

[chiph]

> Loudness/compression is a deliberate choice and has nothing to do with noise.

Agree. Personally I find the amount of compression used in many of today's releases highly objectionable. I'm a big Duran Duran fan, and was really looking forward to listening to "Future Past" in 2021 after pre-ordering it. But within a minute into it I thought there was something wrong with my headphones. Turns out they compressed the hell out of it - the album is unlistenable, even in a car going down the road.

The large amount of compression is commonly known as the Loudness War:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

[topranks]

I think the phraseology that conveys this best is that records are worse at reproducing the original signal than digital.

But the result, while a less accurate reproduction, might aesthetically be more pleasing to some.

The only thing we can measure objectively is how accurate the reproduction is, and in that vinyl will always come second.

[dsubburam]

> Well, the objective sounds quality is always _worse_ than eg CDs.

Not necessarily true. If you have a good pair of speakers, a good amplifier, but a bad DAC[1], a CD can sound worse than vinyl (whose output does not need to go through a DAC). Old CD players (like mine) have dated built-in DACs, so this is not too exceptional a situation.

The above comment holds even if the vinyl was made from a CD source, since the vinyl maker could have used a quality DAC that's better than your CD player's.

For a long time, I didn't understand why my FM radio channel (WQXR) sounded better than my CDs. Turns out my CD player's DAC was poor in comparison to what the radio station was using to play their CDs.

[1]Digital to Analog Converter.

[filmor]

And if you have a shitty record player, it will sound even worse. I don't think this can count in any way, reasonable CD players are easy to obtain and in the worst case you can always pull a FLAC play through whatever high-quality DAC you have available. Vinyl on the contrary is physically constrained regarding sound quality.

[mrob]

Good DACs are cheap now, e.g. the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm "adapter" is actually a DAC. It sells for 9GBP on their website, and sound quality is so good that you're unlikely to be able to hear any flaws. Basically any modern DAC that was designed with quality in mind will exceed vinyl audio quality.

[dsr_]

Not "unlikely". Impossible for a human with excellent hearing in a normally quiet but not anechoic room.

All the flaws will be from, in order:

- the speakers

- the speakers' interactions with the room

- the amplifier

- the source

[pdntspa]

A fresh record on a clean needle with a good turntable will sound identical to a CD, if not slightly better, because the physical grooves will not have the same quantization as digital

[topranks]

This is simply not true.

Nyquist’s sampling theorem tells us that sound sampled at 44kHz will reproduce all frequencies in the range of human hearing. There is no “quantization”.

https://youtu.be/cIQ9IXSUzuM

Further the act of mastering and creating the record, and playback using a needle, will inevitably affect the sound somewhat. In the scenario you describe the music is likely to sound very good, but it will never be identical to a CD.

[pdntspa]

There is too quantization, you cant get to any bitness without quantizing the raw waveform at some level.

A signal that exceeds the maximum amplitude allowed by the media will behave dramatically different as digital bits vs an analog groove. There are also very subtle transformations that occur as a byproduct of the needle physically moving around and through the groove, in addition to any properties imparted on the sound by cabling, connectivity, or the preamp's response curve.

Nyquist theorem simply says we can reproduce the original waveform with enough bandwidth. But it does not take into account other properties of the medium.

Subjectively I find the bass on vinyl to be smoother and more buttery given the same recording available digitally. Maybe its the mastering. Maybe its because the music isn't clipping. But for bass music it is definitely a bit of a je ne sais quoi, its definitely there with a good needle, preamp, pressing, and speaker.

[unvs]

It might also sound much worse for a number of reasons that would prevent the proper cutting of the laquer master. I have my studio next door to a vinyl mastering studio and it is truly a fascinating craft. The cutter might have to narrow the stereo image to prevent the needle from jumping out of the groove. Often this is done by mono'ing the low end. The tool he uses will gradually mono the low end on a slope from i.e 150hz and down. This can lead to less low end especially if there are phasing issues that will cancel out signal when collapsing to mono. They will also high pass from 20-30hz and low pass (can't remember how low he went), and sometimes even de-ess the entire mix!

Also if the sides of the vinyl are too long, the sound quality will suffer badly.

And if they screw up the cut, it's a lot of $$$ for each laquer master and the diamond needle for cutting doesn't last many records either.

[matwood]

> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.

This is what we did with cassettes and then CDs. I had dates where we sat on the floor and just thumbed through our CD catalogs and played music for hours. Even today, I still prefer to listen to whole albums.

[conductr]

Me too to all. Listening to full albums and not using infinite playlist is why, for me, Spotify is not really any different than the older tech and I don’t feel the need to jump on the vinyl train. I’m not a collector/hoarder of physical objects, I know I’d actually listen less if I had to search the shelf and drop a needle. Maybe because I developed these habits earlier in life, well before streaming or even Napster. It is interesting to see how the younger digital natives are interested in analog music now.

“Supporting the artist” is a commonly cited reason. In the part, we bought posters, shirts and concert tickets to to accomplish this.

[giantrobot]

> That said, the deliberate experience of sitting in your couch, doing/thinking nothing else but the music you're listening, is for me an invaluable ritual. It's like meditation.

Just imagine if you could do that with a CD or even an album of MP3s! But that's just not possible, it can only be done with vinyl records.

[endorphine]

You're right, it's not vinyl that makes it possible, so I believe there's more to this than my original comment implies.

I think it's the physical aspect of the vinyl compared to streaming services. Some people do that with CDs, but I like vinyls more since they feel more "analog" to me. Also I like the warmth of their sound. Also GP has a point about the turntable engaging you more.

> Forcing yourself to flip the record and drop the needle keeps you more engaged I feel.

[jackstraw14]

It's a physical process/ritual that a number of people still do and reinforce among each other. It's fine to call it what it is, and it's fine that it makes you feel more connected to the music. But it ain't the music.

[pacifika]

A nice vinyl album with artwork shows a lot of care has gone into making it, where as an album in Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself.

A vinyl without sleeve and artwork and a carefully curated Spotify playlist sit somewhere inbetween.

[hutzlibu]

"Spotify has been stripped of all uniqueness and identity in all but the sound itself."

There is at least the cover picture left, but yes, I would not recommend Spotify for mindful listening. It is designed for "engagement", I still have not found out, how to tell it to stop, after that one song I want to hear.

It insists on playing something else. Very rarely something interesting shows up, but usually I just get annoyed for it playing radio, when I wanted ONE song, nothing more.

So I love my own digital music collection and player that remains under my control. I have a shuffle there as well, but conscious listening remains possible, even though surely the experience would be more powerful, combined with the ritual of going through the physical records, holding the artwork in my hands and putting the one record in. But for convinience, I stick to my digital collection. (I don't think all my music is on vinyl and I would need extra rooms then)

[tekla]

How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off.

Its fucking wild to imply that Spotify prevents mindful listening to music, what the hell does it mean that its designed for engagement?

I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify.

[hutzlibu]

"How to get Spotify to stop playing music: Take headphones off."

And when the sound comes from the boxes? Then yes, I have to hurry back to the laptop to stop the not fitting next song (e.g. something fast, after I choose something chill). This is ridiculous.

The feature "stop after song" is avaiable in every serious music player I used (and also the one I programmed myself). But it is not in Spotify, even though it is trivial.. This is what I call "designed for engagement". I have to click more and find new things etc.

"I dont think I've ever listened to a song I didn't want to listen to on Spotify. "

So how do you achieve that? Do you only use custom playlists, or do just mostly don't care so much?

Because if I have one song in my head, then sometimes I just want this exact song and if I tell spotify to play this song - then afterwards it plays something totally different, even though it tries to fit the same genre, but this works badly. And even if it would be the same genre, some songs are just deep. And you want silence afterwards to process them - if you are consciously listenting in the first place. For some background noise spotify works great, no doubt about that.

[squarefoot]

I wonder why nobody thought about recreating album sleeves with the original artwork and no vinyl inside, just the housing capable of carrying one or more CDs, that is, giving a CD owner the ability to put their discs into a old-style sleeve. I'm all for digital music, but totally miss the old sleeves and prints. Would it be economically viable for a business to acquire only the rights for the prints, possibly plus lyrics, but not the music, so that they could sell the prints alone?

[ChatGTP]

Also the smell, I love the smell of old record covers.

[bayindirh]

This is exactly why I have a turntable, too. Just buying the records of my most loved albums, setting aside some time to listen them intently and enjoy the process.

It’s not like meditation. It is meditation. As a meditation teacher, I can definitely say that.

[papito]

Well, it's not LIKE meditation :) It is meditation. The process of the ritual focuses the mind on the task at hand.

[nend]

>It's like meditation

What you're describing is mindfulness meditation.

[WalterBright]

Sometimes I prefer the original vinyl sound compared to the digitally remixed version of the old songs.

But most of my vinyl is of old albums that nobody bothered to re-release on CD. It's fun to buy them cheap at the thrift store, wash them, and see what's on them.

[hungryforcodes]

Good points. Just to expand, I find with instant on digital music I never really listen to it with as much attention as vinyl.

In fact I love everything about vinyl except the sort durarion of each side, but even that makes me focus more closely on the experience. I know I'll have to turn it over shortly...

[HellDunkel]

Vinyl is a completly different experience: the smell, the look(!), the age(!), the masting and care for the production, the cover(!)- these things matter.

[zeristor]

I loved the ceremony of taking out a record, and putting on a turn table.

[HellDunkel]

Yes. People think vinyl is for snobs (especially the silicon valley type) but they don’t seem to realize a) music went digial before the iphone (CDs) and b) most of them don‘t even know much music.

[qwery]

That is a good example of an elitist (or snobbish) viewpoint.

[HellDunkel]

Really? You can appreciate playing, touching, looking at vinyl or watching vinyl beeing played out without beeing a collector or owning some. But it is hard for me to imagine somebody not appreciating vinyl and all the things attached beeing a true pop music lover. With classical music it may be a completely different story.

[TheCondor]

I call it “appointment listening.”

Dedicating time to listen to a specific album. My kids may never understand it. An album is an interesting art form, it captures a few pieces of time: when it was made and then then it was consumed. The cover art and liner art. The order of the songs. All assembled with intention. There are albums I’ve heard hundreds of time and I will still hear little new bits I never quite noticed before.

I do love digital music and having it everywhere, but it is special to just listen and take it I’m.

[kasey_junk]

Why would your kids not understand it? My son certainly has no problem exploring album art and reading liner notes while he enjoys one of his favorites.

It seems like a fairly universal human quality to want to intentionally listen to music.

[hammyhavoc]

Because the comment makes the assumption that it'll conflict with their apparent low attention spans from years of skipping through songs on their music streaming platforms of choice, rendering them unable to sit down to consume an entire album.

[Zircom]

I think both if you are reading too much into his comment and seeing things that aren't there. I don't think it was a jab at younger generations inability to appreciate things due to short attention spans, but more expressing sadness that streaming has killed the traditional experience/concept of an album and that it's probably never coming back.

[hammyhavoc]

It might not have been intended as a jab, but journalists frequently repeat that x songs on Spotify are skipped after y time, and the conclusion the journalists arrive at is that between this example, and the likes of TikTok and Snapchat, the younger generations have short attention spans.

[Zircom]

Cool story, not my point. I'm not questioning the validity of what you're saying or the existence that people think what you're saying, but how you jumped straight to ascribing those views to the original commenter. You can make your own point without the accusations, is my point.

[HellDunkel]

Digital music resparked my interest in vinyl. With streaming you have a great tool to figure out what you really love and need to have on vinyl. Less is more.

[topranks]

Fully agree with everything.

Except I hate coloured vinyl. But hey each to their own :)