Excellent!

And as someone says in the comments, when a lot of music is recorded with a flat/ limited dynamic range there is even less reason to spend a fortune on equipment pumping out ultra HD sound.

It's also strange that there is so much enthusiasm for vinyl at the moment because the truth is that it was/ is vastly inferior to CD's or mp3. The audiophool probably listens to vinyl on his HD speakers/ amplifier set-up.

Graham

vikinger wrote:

Excellent!

And as someone says in the comments, when a lot of music is recorded with a flat/ limited dynamic range there is even less reason to spend a fortune on equipment pumping out ultra HD sound.

It's also strange that there is so much enthusiasm for vinyl at the moment because the truth is that it was/ is vastly inferior to CD's or mp3. The audiophool probably listens to vinyl on his HD speakers/ amplifier set-up.

Graham

You can't really generalise about vinyl.

I've got a mix of old pressings and newly released vinyl.

The older pressings sound better than regular Spotify (or chose your 256/324 stream), in two ways.

The sound is warmer firstly, and secondly a lot of the melodies,whether sax or guitar lines sound more prominent.

So part due to the older mixing recording methods, and part due to the slightly warmer feel of vinyl ( I've played guitar and piano for 25 years, so I think I have some sensitivity to how instruments should sound, at a crude level).

But I'm not in the camp that vinyl is better - it can be, but can also be no better or worse.

And while audiophiles can be a complete bore, its not as if every sound system sounds the same, from source to equipment. And some people are more sensitive to small differences than others - that shouldn't be controversial.

And I'm no vinyl junkie, I've got about 40 odd albums that I love.

Tidal is more than good enough for the rest.

But I wouldn't over generalise.

Sandyb wrote:

But I wouldn't over generalise.

I have vinyl too. It's different. It's warmer. It's full of ticks and crackles no matter how carefully you clean the records.

If you have HD speakers/amps for listening to other streaming etc then of course you are probably going to listen to vinyl on the same system unless you have an old Beogram/ Beomaster/ Beovox set up for the purpose.

I suspect that the main difference is that most vinyl was mastered with a greater dynamic range than many flat/loud CD's. But a CD with the correct dynamic range is undoubtedly superior to vinyl (in my opinion!)

Graham

Agreed, the principal difference is of course the older mastering techniques.

There is a bit of extra warmth, and on acoustic music, or music with real instruments rather than electronic bleeps etc, vinyl can sound fab.

I'm no vinyl evangelist though....at times though, when I want to sit down and properly get immersed, standard streams leave me a bit cold for some music.

And generally why I had all my CD's ripped full fat, and listen to them as a first choice.

So many things influence the listening as we know - I'm a little bit towards the audiophile end of things, but not militantly so.  My BL18's are fine, good even but leave me wanting a lot more with music. Thinking of getting some BL50s, though I still havent recovered from trying them out next to some BL90's last week. Christ almighty, the 90's are something else. Off topic I know.

Vinyl is "warmer" because it's an inaccurate transfer medium. Vinyl is well known to do many things to a signal, sum the bass to mono, induce phase and channel separation errors as a function of frequency, and introduce frequency errors that are a long way from "flat." You may personally like the way it sounds, but accurate is not a good description. If you like vinyl you will like it more than the original master tape in all likelihood. CD was found in numerous tests back in the day to, if done properly, sound far more like the master tape than vinyl, often identical. Euphonic distortion is something vinyl excels at.

Carver understood this, he used to make a thing called a "digital time lens" that induced some of the distortions of vinyl into a CD playback. Worked remarkably well at "vinylizing" CD.

Accuracy has a meaning in transport media, it means that what you get at home is as close to what the mastering engineer produced as possible, a simple transfer function with a gain of 1 across the frequency spectrum, adding no distortion.

Agree with Jeff - people might prefer the sound of the vinyl medium but it is definitely not the most accurate, cd is superior, and by quite a margin.

Puncher wrote:

Agree with Jeff - people might prefer the sound of the vinyl medium but it is definitely not the most accurate, cd is superior, and by quite a margin.

Once again here is a thing where I agree with Jeff (and Puncher).

However, if someone likes the sound of vinyl, go for it.....just don’t call it audiophile or highres or superiour......

And please don’t make a religion of it.

Personally I am all into the ‘accurate’ camp of listeners - I prefer a cd/16/44.1-spec file...........even if it a welldone 320 compressed version.

I like the sound of vinyl but being largely a classical listener the snap, crackle and pop is rather grating. I do not kid myself that vinyl is technically better. If you love the sound of vinyl then no one else can say a thin - that is all that matters. What i will say though is that i have spent hours listening to 24bit/192 FLAC vs CD 16bit/44.1khz and i would be deluding myself if i could hear the difference. The music from Chandos, DG and Linn is recorded in 24/192 and usually well recorded and mixed. I can be pretty sure that the recording engineer and record label wont be up to any naughty business upconverting standard Cd quality files to 24/192. Havign spent hours comparing these two on the BL90 i am not convinced of the superiority of higher than CD quality. More isnt necessarily better and when you understand what bit depth and samplign are capable of and why they are used you soon understand why they wont bring about better sonics.

The biggest difference lies in the quality of the speakers and the quality of the recording/mastering - everything else is to my mind secondary and minimal. I have listened to my collection across the breadth of the B&O speaker range over the last 19 years and the level of detail, the richness of the instruments and the overall sonic nature has improved as one goes up the range and forward in time. i have also listened to selected tracks across 30 different 'audiophile' speakers from KEF to Magico to Horns to Electrostats and the preceding equipment's ability (when switched over) leads to minimal-indistinguishable difference. The old adage of 'Source First' from Naim may have been true in the vinyl era but doesnt stand up in the digital era IMHO. 

Buy the best speakers and room treatment your budget can buy, spend the rest buying well recorded reputable material that hasnt been compressed to death and any money left over on the streamer, amps, cables etc...