Alright, so the reasons I've heard over the years that vinyl sounds better are:
a) the high-frequency roll-off starts at 15 kHz; b) the needle vibrates which smooths out the sound and provides warmth; c) the needle melts the vinyl at the molecular level which also smooths out the sound and provides warmth; d) the needle picks up feedback from the room; e) not all vinyl is created equal, you get a lot more quality out of a 5-minute 12" 45 rpm than a 30-minute 12" 33 1/3 rpm; f) clicks and pops and burns are part of the charm; g) the runout groove nagging you to get up is part of what vinyl sounds like; h) vinyl is physical and cool and sometimes extremely rare and barring an ABX test your perception of how good something is will be affected by these supposedly irrelevant meta qualities; i) some things are only available on vinyl, so of course it sounds better; j) depending on the type of music, the mastering won't be targeting mp3 players with earbuds but instead big club systems, so if you have good speakers, it might be easier to find the mastering you want on vinyl.
I don't know how many of these I agree with. Honestly the worst thing about vinyl is that it's heavy.
> j) depending on the type of music, the mastering won't be targeting mp3 players with earbuds but instead big club systems, so if you have good speakers, it might be easier to find the mastering you want on vinyl.
For me, the worst thing about vinyl was feedback. I love subsonics at concert levels, and it's virtually impossible to isolate turntables well enough. Back in the day, it was my practice to copy vinyl to tape, and then just play tapes. That also protected vinyl against wear and crud.
CDs aren't perfect either. Mixing can be tweaked with software, however. Also, for some genres it's possible to get multi-channel WAV that's readily mixable.
I just find this hilarious. If you like the sound of vinyl; record it to a CDROM, play the CDROM, it sounds just like vinyl, pops, clicks, skips and all.
Also, back in the glorious disco era, record companies would release 12" single disks, where the grooves were spaced wide enough that the bass beat could be laid down. What more proof does anyone need that 33 records are inferior?
I'm afraid that is incorrect. I own many disco ones, and the bass is what they're for. The grooves are spread out and it frequently runs at 45 rpm. It's pretty obvious if you listen to one vs the 33 version.
The non-existence of ads on the internet from 40 years ago is not a validation of your universal claim. Second, people still press 12" 45 rpm singles, why would they do that when 33 rpm is available?
My 12" single of "Ipanema" from the B-52s is 3:58. The album version is 4:24.
My 12" single of "I'm So Excited" by the Pointer Sisters is 3:47. The album version is 3:53.
I doubt that'll convince you, either. But I recommend that you actually obtain a 12" disco single from the late 70's and a 45 and compare with your own ears. It's also fun to look at the difference in the grooves with a magnifying glass.
You get longer playtime than a 7" single. 12" singles were only ever marketed for extended remixes - longer play time than a 7" single but cheaper than a 33 1/3 RPM album. Do you have any ads for 12" singles that talk about better sound quality?
Okay, maybe some unintuitive pizza math works here.
7" 45 rpm record, about 4.5 minutes max. Center label is 4". Label area = pi * 4^2 = 50.27 in^2. Total record area = pi * 7^2 = 153.94 in^2. Playable area (max, ignoring runout and edge) = 153.94 - 50.27 = 103.67 in^2. Call it 100 in^2.
12" 33 rpm single, about 12 minutes max. Center label is 4". Label area = 50.27 in^2. Total record area = pi * 12^2 = 452.39 in^2. Playable area = 452.39 - 50.27 = 402.12 in^2. Call it 400 in^2.
So, the 12" record has 400/100 = 4x as much space, but the playtime is 12 / 4.5 = 2.7x. For the remainder, you get quality. If the 7" record was 33rpm and you had about 7 minutes max, then 12/7 = 1.7x, which means even more room for quality improvements.
In general, you can trade play time for quality when cutting vinyl. If your grooves are at the maximum width, to the point that you'd leave substantial uncut vinyl between them to fill up the track width on your record, then you can get even more quality by moving from 33rpm to 45rpm because now a longer length of groove contains the same length of sound. All else considered, 12" 7-minute 45rpm sounds very good.
And also, I know the original reference was to disco, but new 12" singles are still being released, sometimes exclusively on vinyl. It slowed down, but it never stopped. Sorry, no ads, just personal experience.
I've never seen an ad for one. Most of mine were distributed to DJs only. Another nicety with the DJ ones is they didn't have pops and clicks when new. Sometimes the flip side was the same edit - in case you damaged one side, use the other!
As a vinyl enthusiast, I find claims of vinyl's superior "sound qualitY" (whatever that means) to be laughable. A CD can clearly outreproduce a vinyl even the first time you play the vinyl record -- by the fifth time you're playing the vinyl record it's clearly inferior from a technical perspective.
The thing that's fun about vinyl is that it feels more like a physical artifact -- each one sounds different, the album art is bigger, it's been around for a few decades, etc... that's why I like it.
Yet I think this article is interesting because it provides us with several explanations of why people perceive analog recording as better.
Here are a few quoting from the article:
- "few people who would tell you that recording classical music to analog tape has any benefit at all," Metcalfe says. But for some artists, he says — particularly in rock — those layers of distortion are preferable.
- [...] recording to analog tape isn't any purer than recording music digitally. But the distortion and pitch variation that analog tape adds to the recording are preferred by some artists and audiences.
- "Because vinyl is a reflection and any digital is a reconstitution; it's not the same thing."
- [...]the distortion and pitch variation that analog tape adds to the recording are preferred by some artists and audiences.
- However, for a less skilled mixing engineer, mixing to analog tape can "'glue' the music together in the most wonderful way,"
warmth = the warp your record acquires when it gets warm. Mild warp (warmth) means the sound speeds up and slows down as it rides the hills and valleys. More warp (warmth) is the gap in sound as the needle achieves that coveted liftoff effect. "Warmth" can also happen when the manufacturer punches the center hole off-center, a depressingly common characteristic. Also known as "Doppler shift".
Depth = when the grooves are too close together and exceed a certain depth, you can simultaneously time travel both forwards and backwards in the music by about 2 seconds. This quantum "depth" effect is most prized.
Those are just artefacts that vinyl provides. As digital is a superior format, technically, it would be possible to record/produce/mix a song to sound identically (flawed) to vinyl.
a) the high-frequency roll-off starts at 15 kHz; b) the needle vibrates which smooths out the sound and provides warmth; c) the needle melts the vinyl at the molecular level which also smooths out the sound and provides warmth; d) the needle picks up feedback from the room; e) not all vinyl is created equal, you get a lot more quality out of a 5-minute 12" 45 rpm than a 30-minute 12" 33 1/3 rpm; f) clicks and pops and burns are part of the charm; g) the runout groove nagging you to get up is part of what vinyl sounds like; h) vinyl is physical and cool and sometimes extremely rare and barring an ABX test your perception of how good something is will be affected by these supposedly irrelevant meta qualities; i) some things are only available on vinyl, so of course it sounds better; j) depending on the type of music, the mastering won't be targeting mp3 players with earbuds but instead big club systems, so if you have good speakers, it might be easier to find the mastering you want on vinyl.
I don't know how many of these I agree with. Honestly the worst thing about vinyl is that it's heavy.