there is not one album in existence that better on CD than on vinyl is there?

A lot of things sound better on vinyl. I would favour CDs for music with a very dynamic range or a lot of high frequencies (virtually all classical music or electroacoustic music), or that was created digitally in the first place.

Xp I prefer a room littered with vinyl to a room littered with CDs. when I kick over a stack of CDs, I swear; several of them break. They can't be put back together. I can kick an LP in its sleeve across the room and I'll maybe bend the corner, no big deal.

Yeah, CDs were actually pretty great- compact and portable, great sound, easy to jump from track to track. The problem with CDs imo was those plastic jewel cases. They're unnecessarily bulky. They're fragile and always break. CDs would be a lot more desirable to collectors now if they'd been packaged in mini paper LP sleeves like those posh Japanese reissues. There's a reason those ugly CD storage booklets were such a hit.

Countless records are better on CD. There are albums with lots of high end detail in the mix. There are albums that were sequenced with the CD format in mind etc

that was created digitally in the first place.

Exactly

The remastered CD of New Tradionalists by Devo sounds way better than the original vinyl, which was made from a compromised master tape.

my post in this thread from 2013 still stands up.
sorry, i get the emotional connection and all that, but i have no love for vinyl.

Yeah lots of stuff sounds better on vinyl, and there are still some excellent vinyl masters and pressenings like the recent-ish INA GRM reissues on Editions Mego. But for the most part new vinyl is the naked emperor in the room.

The smart collectors are buying up CDs while they're "junk" imo.

I broke so many cds that before the legit digital explosion I rebought the same album as much as three times

I've owned thousands of CDs and never broke one. What are you doing with them?

Nuh uh, i ain't tellin YOU, cop!

Twice in my life I have felt the giddy terror of bending a CD in one hand until the edges touch, then waiting for the splintering sound before it explodes into shards. But they crack at the hub way too easily.

As an artifact, no.

For sound quality, convenience, durability, space (re: small apartments), affordability (re: modern LP reissues), re: not having pops/warp/dust, not having to stop in the middle and turn it over... Most any album can be better on CD.

was pretty ardently pro-CD until recently, still feel a well-mastered CD on an okay or better system thru a decent CD player is pretty unbeatable

a couple of years ago decided I wanted to listen to my old LPs again so have been on a journey of trying to get them sounding as good as vinyl aficionados claim is possible

admittedly a lot of my vinyl gear is the spoils of being an accomplished rat scavenger at flea markets etc, but I reckon I've only just got to the point where I feel it's even close

my tentative conclusion is that you'd need to spend a whole lot more money getting a decent vinyl system together than a CD system of similar quality? like, maybe a $5k dynavector cart would blow my fkn socks off, but I'm unlikely to ever find out

all that said I really enjoy the hobbyist aspects of vinyl - crate-digging, cleaning, having the occasional market stall - plus trying new TTs and carts

there are a few albums and 12"s that do sound incontrovertibly better to me on wax - but is that simply because the CD masters sucked?

apropos of nothing, since I started listening with a critical ear for SQ and comparing formats, I'm noticing that a lot of imperfections are actually baked into the source recording and some records are gonna sound a bit rough on any format (not just low fi punk records or whatever)

I've owned thousands of CDs and never broke one. What are you doing with them?

― Gerald McBoing-Boing,

Seconding this ^^^ I also have thousands of them and can't understand how you can break them unless you're incredibly clumsy.

I'm agnostic on jewel cases, but one advantage of them is that you can completely replace the case if it cracks, breaks etc.

This is the only CD that's ever fully broken on me. Not unusual for this design. I ripped it in about 2005 but I can't find the files...

https://img.discogs.com/gSWK7TqWXpgxMu48NbZCWymqc60=/fit-in/600x528/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-648-1197113402.jpeg.jpg

o yah those are infamous for actually breaking

All the metal case CR albums would eventually crack the CD because the case center was made of stronger stuff than the plastic

since I started listening with a critical ear for SQ and comparing formats, I'm noticing that a lot of imperfections are actually baked into the source recording

In the early days of the format there was some standard text on just about all CDs that passively aggressively reminded the consumer of this.

Nice thing about CDs these days if you have a computer and an optical drive is you can get high end digital to analog conversion from prosumer audio interfaces not costing much more than £100.

see also: Dragonfly

Nice thing about CDs these days if you have a computer and an optical drive is you can get high end digital to analog conversion from prosumer audio interfaces not costing much more than £100.

Oh, this is def what I do with CDs (or decent digital files, which I mostly put in a similar category). But I just use a Pro-Ject Essentials II turntable for home listening. It cost much much less than $5k and sounds v good to me. A lot of folk, jazz, and old rock is very satisfying with the vinyl warmth imo. I really like Band of Gypsys in that format, for example. Some recent LPs that sound good to me are Sarah Louise's Field Guide, Battle Trance's Blade of Love (I have it in HQ digital and LP and sometimes enjoy the warmth of the LP), Sonoluminescence Trio + 1 - Live at the Record Centre.

I think Swan's The Seer is better digital, it's just entirely too long for vinyl, and changing the records is a pain.

very otm, I can't stand it when long tracks are split on vinyl

A lot of it depends on how good your vinyl setup (which requires TT, cartridge, and phonostage) v your CD player.

I have 3 Todd Rundgren albums which definitely do not sound very good on vinyl: A Wizard, A True Star, Initiation, and the first Utopia album. all of them are around an hour long (Initiation is 67 minutes long, surely one of the longest single LPs ever?) and you can definitely hear the degradation, particularly as you get towards the center of the record. CD versions of all these sound pretty good though.

(Initiation is 67 minutes long, surely one of the longest single LPs ever?

!!!! single album? I had no idea that was even possible, that's 20 mins over the recommended max, crazy

i bet it sounds like shit!

Initiation has that 30+ minute song on it, no?

"A Treatise On Cosmic Fire" 36:00

Wow.

I bet if you just grazed the surface with a fingernail you'd make a skippable scratch.

admittedly it's so strange that the poor sound quality isn't as noticeable. its more of an issue on Side 2 of AWATS, particularly "Is It My Name?" and "Just One Victory". its amusing how Todd's response to this was "yeah you've just gotta turn the volume up some"

ha, yeah making mixtapes with AWATS was funny because you had to turn the input level wayyyyy up

I'm actually kinda surprised that AWATS hasn't come out in some deluxe 2x LP configuration considering how iconic an album it is

amusingly Initiation is actually a minute longer than Todd (his prior LP), which was a double

XPS Isn't there a late vinyl-era Cure album with a notice like that re: length and mastering volume?

Friday music did a 2lp reissue of Wizard

well I'll be damned, there is

I wonder how it sounds. I don't really wanna pay $30 to find out

Side 1 of E2-E4 is 31 minutes and the whole thing is continuous. I'm sure there are records that are quite a bit longer but not too many that are supposed to somewhat full frequency range and dynamic. Never heard an original but an old Spalax reissue doesn't sound too bad.

The Cure’s Disintegration has a note saying it was mixed to be played loud, but that was on all formats. The OG vinyl does indeed sound shit though - well mostly Fascination St is a mess of inner groove distortion at the end of side 1, side 2 is just about bearable. And that’s with two songs lopped off the track listing! I can only think that after their previous 2LP the record company baulked at following it up with another (esp as they were legendarily unimpressed upon hearing the record.

In fact if we are talking original pressings then in my experience Head On The Door, KM3 and Disintegration all sounded way better on CD. I’m sure the reissues are an improvement tho.

what length does a side have to be before inner groove distortion becomes noticeable? I've only really noticed it on those Todd LPs. though I've heard that they deliberately put quieter/less dynamic songs at the end of a side to mitigate this.

I dunno, I always thought about 24 minutes was proper max LP side length. In my experience older LPs with shorter sides often better sustain surface damage, as the grooves are cut deeper (?)

I've got a copy of Arvo Part's Miserere on vinyl and side one is 34:44 - it sounds pretty terrible, weird that ECM would even bother with this in 1991 when CDs were pretty established.

Vinyl On Demand has done flawless pressings of 32-34 minute LP sides fwiw, but it requires fairly rigorous quality control

don't know what thread to post this in so I'm just picking this one

if your turntable has a preamp, does it matter which source you plug it into? I was playing a Dan Deacon record and during one of the more insane bits I noticed a ton of distortion, most of which went away when I switched from CD to AUX. but a few of my LPs still sound a bit distorted in the bass frequencies - dunno if they're bad pressings or if something's not quite right there. it's definitely not there when I switch it to just playing off an iPod, though the vinyl sounds better overall in spite of that. is there a specific setting optimized for modern turntables, a setting that old receivers may not have?

sounds like aux is the right input. is the turntable grounded?

also if the preamp has a mm or mc setting make sure that's right. patch chords are in tight, etc.

mine is internally grounded, I don't hear any hum or static

one thing I'm a bit curious about is the fact that it's a straight-arm turntable - a Stanton STR8-80 if you're curious (they don't make 'em anymore). I think this was made for DJing (which I haven't done in a long time) but I've heard that the inner-groove distortion can be pronounced on these. indeed, on some (but not all) records the last track of the side sounds a bit off. I've been thinking about getting something new but I don't know if the difference is going to be worth the cash...anyone knowledgeable on such matters?

ahh I also see that there's a Phono/Line switch under the slipmat, I'll try it on the Phono setting and see if it makes a difference, though I suspect it doesn't

i had the exact same issue with my turntable. i switched to a cartridge with a micro-linear stylus (AT VM95-ML in my case) and it made all the difference.
night and day. it's possible that the same effect could be achieved by tweaking all those tweakable things that turntables have, but 1) i am relatively inept, and 2) my turntable doesn't have most of those tweakable adjustments, like VTA etc.

i mean inner groove distortion btw.

yeah phono into aux and you'll probably barely hear any volume. i think you want line into aux.

my receiver has a Phono setting as well, which obviously I can't use with line, but maybe the preamp in the receiver is better than the one on the turntable

try 'em both and see which one you like more. maybe the distortion problem goes away with one of them.

hey great it worked out for you, frogbs. enjoy the listening!