I mean, Cassettes do have a place with Retro-Futurism
Though, usually that involves several fiction Cassette formats, designed to hold nearly 900KiB of data--a mind boggling amount of data to be carrying around; requiring several Megahertz to fully traverse effectively
😂 I can't even tell you have fast I ditched cassettes when CDs came out. I was skeptical of digital, and rightfully so. Purchased digital content can be removed from your library whenever they feel like yanking it. But I still prefer it.
I worked for Nak in the 80’s and if you get a well recorded cassette then yes, it’s better. We used to make recordings of classics, licensed of course, straight from masters but not sure is anyone does that anymore.
I have a 70 year old Little Richard record that jumps out of the speakers and puts my CD’s to shame ( he invented rock n roll btw not Elvis the Pelvis)
Things recorded for vinyl sound better than the CD versions of them. Things recorded for CD release sound better on CD. iTunes needs to stop only offering the '2016 Remaster' of either cos they sound wrong!
I think I used to listen to a bootlegged version of The Killers' "When You Were Young" that had the DJ chiming in at the end 😂 I might still have it on an old mp3 player I never got rid of
*fights the WELL AKCHUUUUULY demon that lives inside that knows about this stuff* vinyls expensive man, it is. it looks nice though. also, most peoples hearing gets worse as they age so, i dunno, choice is great, right?!
Guitarists, especially non-professionals, sure are known for being immune to all kinds of psychoacoustic effects such as "which kind of wood is this neck made from" or "these identical strings pack a bit more punch" or "I thought it was the LP but apparently the record is played with a Telecaster"
I was a professional for a lifetime, in the finest(and worst!) studios in London and Germany . The sound of these solid blocks of wood is governed almost entirely by the strings, and the pick-ups, and in the end,amp and loudspeakers. Postion of pickups in relation to bridge greatly affects sound.
The sound of any electric guitar is generated almost 100% by the strings and pick ups . The wood makes little difference. When you can tell the difference between an Amati and Stradivarius violin, come back !
Yeah, exactly. And most of the tone comes from the amp and the speaker anyway. But still people have the craziest notions about the tonal difference of god knows what.
The sound of arch-tops varies much more. The greatest sound I’ve ever heard came from Barney Kessel’s old Gibson , with the Charlie Christian pick up. His guitar even came over acoustically, over the drums, bass and two other guitars of Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd.
Thanks.I was a top professional session player in England and the Continent of Europe .My friends include John Mclaughlin,Joe Pass, Herb Ellis,Barney Kessel, many others .I was invited to become Lecturer for Modern Guitar at a German University, but unable to take up the post due to a stroke.
Little clay plots from thousands of years ago that happened to pick up sound vibrations as they were being detailed sound better than vinyl. I just like that classic sound quality
And it melts in the heat so you have to be careful how you store it. I had one side of an album ("Annie") melt enough to be unplayable after spending a few hours under the back window of a car.
No kidding. Music in my car sounds better when wired from my phone, but the level of screwing around isn't worth the benefit.
Besides, who wants 16-bit CDs in favour of (many) 24-bit streamed music, even when they're at home with HQ, wired audio? What good is copper wire if one end is a tin can? 🙂
CDs are the clear winner. But only if the CDs are actually burned copies from 90s mix tapes that have flopped around loose inside my center console until the sharpie labels have worn off.
I don't think vinyl sounds better, but it makes you really think about what you are listening to because you have to choose and work for it.
it also presents the songs in the order the artist thought they should be listened to.
I used to complain and educate these nerds until I realized that if everyone knew the truth, used CD prices would be just as ridiculous as vinyl prices, so I shut up.
Mostly the deal with vinyl is it’s an overall more aesthetically pleasing experience - taking out this nice big black platter, appreciating the much larger artwork and readable liner notes, etc…
Plus, the shorter the program the more you pay attention to it.
78’s - people put one one and sat and listened to it.
Same with 45’s
LP’s people put on and hang around the turntable with a few distractions.
CD’s people put on and do chores.
Streaming people ignore
Plus, in my case, my hearing is so shitty anymore they sound the same to me.
And —— I still have all the vinyl from when I was a kid so, y’know, why not listen to it? CD’s that are very old actually get oxidation pits on them - turns out the side where the info is printed is too thin on a lot of ‘em
Digitising music is like cutting a person into millions of transparently thin slices so you can photograph their entire body in 3D.....your eyes cannot see the segments but your unconscious mind Can.
This is why even cheap record players draw people to them....without them knowing why. Analogue.
Yup, have a listen to pre 80s analogue recordings.. from the 70s and before....on a box style turntable with basic speakers. We'll call it an experiment....
Analogue continuous wave forms speak to our bodies. Digital is for our intellect....that is why AI will never replace Life!
PS. I would rather listen to great songs on a shitty transistor radio than Taylor Swift on a million buck sound system....
When I was young, I'd copy my friend's cassettes, and my dub of Masters of Puppets had a warble in the beginning of Sanatarium because of some problem with the tape. But I thought it was just part of the song. I preferred it because it made the song spookier, the real version just sounds fake now
Get yourself a vynl copy of "Transformer" by Lou Reed and play "A walk on the wildside" CD does not even come close. I was a fully paid up member of the Linn Naim owners club.
Personally I just like watching the big disc spin around and wobble and crackle I also like that you can speed it up and they sound like chipmunks so it's definitely the superior media form (not really)
CDs are useless unless you're in a car with a CD player and don't want to fool around with Bluetooth or whatever. Wav is a superior audio format to CDs and is portable. Vinyls have a greater resonance and have more 'color' than CDs and Wav or MP3, also vinyls each have a unique sound quality that
comes with continual usage. You can have multiple copies of the same album and they're not all going to sound the same if they've been played enough times. You don't get that with any other media.
Wav is just a container for PCM, which is what CDs are encoded to. :) It is essentially an uncompressed format.
24-bit digital downloads are infinitely more detailed than vinyl. That said, 16-bit CDs are well beyond what any adult can hear in dynamic range. Which is why is was so popular.
I had an Edison player and cylinders. When that format hit the market, people marveled at the sound quality. Sound continuously improved through the vinyl era. The birth of the high end married exquisite sound and gorgeous looks. We have both progressed and regressed thereafter.
CD was introduced as “perfect sound forever.” It wasn’t, neither as measured or as heard, but it was newer, easier to handle, and more affordable. It marked the era when convenience became more important than sound, which culminated in the mp3 format, though CD got much better in the meantime.
No single uncompressed format is now simply better than another. There are too many variables in the chain of music reproduction. I like hearing small differences in sound, but most people won’t have any interest. I’ve heard legacy CDs that are as good as their 32/192 counterparts. Ok, I’m done.
hey ritual exists in CDs too
halfway points on 2-disc albums, reading the little booklet, the inaugural ripping if you're listening on a computer, etc.
It's not required and it's not the culture around it. There's a reason vinyl is having a comeback and CD sales are down - CDs have always been the convenience option and they're just not as convenient as digital.
Eventually it doesn't sound as good. The sine waves produced by analog are more pleasing to the human ear but few would ever be able to pick up the difference between sine & digital waves. The bigger problem is we no longer have proper stereo setups to listen to music. My beats pill doesn't cut it!
Yes I'll admit that I was wrong. It's been a very long time since I had those conversations. I do believe though, most listeners don't have proper stereo set-ups any more. Even i gave away my turn table, amp & speakers some time ago. The music certainly doesn't sound as good but it's convenient
I bg to differ. They do sound different. Analog versus binary. I had this conversation when Cd's first hit the market in the early 80s. If you have a really high end analogue set up & a top of the line turntable your first couple of spins will sound amazing. But every play deteriorates the vinyl.
Good buy. There is great stuff if you know what to look for. My wife has bought me some high end frying pans, I love to cook, for a fraction of what the would cost new.
Thank you. I agree, there's ample goodies out there. How cool your wife has keen eyes for the things you treasure. Bon appetit, as you listen to your favorite jams! 😀
Easy reason: When CD was new, people knew how to properly master for cd.
This kinda was forgotten during the mid 90s to late 2010s where everything on CD got brickwalled so it would still be loud on a crappy stereo. Some of the worst sounding cds I own are from that period.
Meanwhile the best sounding cds I own are all slayer and metallica albums from the 80s before this started. Luckily in modern times people learnt how to master cds agai nand they havent really sounded like shit since ca 2016.
What I remember from the time CDs came out is the reave reviews of the clarity and perfect sound reproduction. Their vast superiority to vinyl or cassette.
I was at a drunken party trying to explain to someone that gold audio cables wouldn't improve their listening experience. "It's about your ears, not the signal. God, please learn just a little bit about how sound works. I need another beer. Don't be here when I return."
CDs, vinyl… I go to a record store and see a new CD priced at $15, looks at vinyl format of the same record at $25. Brah, I taking the CD. Same record store, see a used CD for $3, looks at the used vinyl of the same record, $150. Yeah, I’ll take the CD there too. You keep your arguments on sound
It’s not the vinyl
It’s analog vs digital and sampling rates are so high now CD’s are much better, but the amplifier has to be analog and have Tubes. Or valves as they are known. They are all transistors now, solid state. Not in a Marshall stack
Yeah, those added higher order harmonics that aren't part of the original recording sure do sound warm. Personally, I like to add a 50 Hz square wave to all my music, also in the interests of it sounding better.
You should. I have 375 LPs of dead artists that are better than more contemporary ones. Think Sinatra, NK Cole, Dinah Washington, Mel Torme’ etc. I’ll be out trying to find more LPs tomorrow.
does anyone who’s not braindamaged actually say that tho
vinyl is all about tactile experience. audio wise it tends towards mediocre but mostly listenable; the entire point is “i gave $ to an artist in order to touch an album and feel something physical, read liner notes, and fangirl over it”
I do. Vinyl sounds amazing. It's not more accurate than digital but that's not the point. The process sounds incredible when pressed and reproduced correctly.
Gotta tell you that getting out of one's chair to turn over a record album, sucks. And I'm old school. Those CD's, and MP3's for that matter go from beginning to end without interruption. That's worth a lot. Analog not withstanding.
Nice score! This is my original Sony player I bought brand new decades ago. I replaced 2 belts on it. I still have its functional remote and I love the unit's many operational controls.
After spending a large amount of money I don't have on a vinyl the shop keeper pushed into my hand, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just go back to CDs and just get better speakers and/or headphones.
The gear behind a cd or vinyl matters more than cd or vinyl, I have heard both, its like a flavor and to each their own, but I have heard better sound from high end cd playing equipment than the most expensive vinyl setup i have heard, which probably more mid end equipment
Problem was at some point they started brickwalling everything on CD so it still sounded loud on a crappy stereo.
Was way harder to do on Vinyl when it came to space on the medium.
My best sounding cds all are Slayer albums from the 80s before that started.
There is a distinct difference. But I can’t honestly say it’s better. I listen to music for enjoyment, not to pick it apart and analyze it. And my collection is in the thousands. Vinyl, Cd, tapes and even mini-disc ( I sold my 8-tracks) I have strong opinions on music, but this is a non-subject.
So much more room for cover art, too. ;-) Let me tell you I've got a portable record player in case anyone wants to listen to high-quality music during a picnic.
That and probably conflating lossless CD audio with MP3 whose quality cannot be proven accurate. An MP3 file created with overly-aggressive compression settings WILL sound like crap.
(But even a well made MP3 on a hi fidelity system can in fact sound fantastic.)
I had one of those huge record player furniture pieces. Best speakers I've ever had. They weren't as clear as the ones I have now, but the balance and depth were amazing.
Actually it is the opposite. The Nyquist Sampling Theorem (upon which all digital audio is based) mathematically proves that perfect digital audio reproduction works. CD audio parameters provide for range that outclasses vinyl in every possible way.
What you are hearing is the comfort behind the coloring biases of vinyl. It is actually possible to digitally simulate that - but I've not heard of anyone wishing to do that.
CDs can perfectly reproduce any frequency up to 22.05 khz. Plus vinyl degrades in quality as it gets to the inner tracks because the vinyl is moving slower on the inside.
this is why 7" records have to be 45rpm, because they'd sound even worse than they already do, if they were 33rpm like an LP.
Speed doesn't directly translate to quality. It's a trade-off. Higher speeds have more granule resolution at the compromise of hiss/noise and time-domain distortion, and higher speed records wear faster.
You need to make sure to not buy CD masters from the wrong era though. There was a period from the mid 90s to 2010s where everything sounded like shit. 97 Iron Maiden remasters are straight up the worst sounding CDs I own. The mixing also is beyond all sense and reason.
This is true. Most CDs from that period are mastered so loud that they are distorted.
Vinyl masters are way better and for this fact alone, vinyl sounds way better than most CDs. One of the benefits of Apple Music and Spotify is that record companies have actually released better masters of CDs.
I think it’s really the total system that’s required for vinyl, that is, an average cd player into a good system will sound as good/better than an average turntable/cartridge into the same system. For vinyl to sound better requires a high end tt/cartridge.
You really haven’t heard the rich tones some of those OG compositions until you’ve heard them in a stone Cathedral sung live by a dedicated chorus of monk-eunuchs.
Nowadays remasters are actually good again atleast. Them being shit was kinda a symptom of the mid 90s to late 2010s with everything getting brickwalled so they still seem "loud" on crappy stereos.
"while the resolution is inferior to any format created after 2005, I find that movies on laserdisc provide something I can't get anywhere else - the ability to be very fucking obnoxious about having a laserdisc collection."
Laserdisc was a wonderful leap over VHS. I for one was an early and heavy adopter, always on the lookout for the latest and greatest players. I felt some sadness when DVD entered the scene with better resolution and convenience, but the improvement was too palpable to ignore, despite LD’s elegance.
I like vinyl, I like physical product.
It doesn't matter what format you listen to, it matters what music you enjoy.
Gimme 90s death metal on tape in a crappy car or King Crimson on Flac througn my (lovely) home stereo.
It's all good.
You could listen to Ed Sheeran on the best stereo ever lol.
Compression always causes fidelity loss. Which is why vinyl sounds better than cd or streaming. Just facts. Pure analog will always sound best, especially if you have a decent system.
Analog will decline in quality the more you use the media, but digital, unless corrupted, is the same quality after listening to it 100 times or 100,000 times.
You may lose some quality off the top, but no degradation.
Same reason why movies are recorded on 35mm first, and native 4k from a master.
Except compression does not always cause fidelity loss. Lossless compression is possible for audio, photos, etc. There's a reason bandcamp lets you upload flac files even though it's a file type that uses compression
Use of compression for CDs is a production choice; CDs themselves can accommodate a far greater range of volume than vinyl (90dB vs 60dB). Recordings often have to be compressed for vinyl release to keep soft sounds from being buried under surface noise. Just actual facts, not vinyl mythology.
For various reasons vinyl masters aren't as compressed as CDs, like you say it doesn't have to be this way. A good example is NIN's "audiophile" version of Hesitation Marks, which essentially was just the vinyl master digitized, and it sounded great. The loudness wars were a mistake.
Not to say I don’t like vinyl, but regardless of how it “sounds” to the listener, from a pure technical perspective, CD is as true to the source master material you can get, as in a lossless clone of the source.
If so, it's sarcasm, which is a challenge for me to realize without context, inflection, etc.
Like the hiss for the tape process in analog recordings that "colors" vinyl recordings = extraneous noise!
CDs are considered lossless. I do love my vinyl, though. It makes you listen to records that are solid all the way through. It also increases engagement for me.
When I authored DVD-A media back in the day, we encoded master tapes at 192 kHz 24 bit. That approached the dynamic range of vinyl but with a much better noise floor. In the Deutsche Grammophon vinyl from the 1960’s, you could hear the solo violinist breathing. Not happening on a 44.1 kHz 16 bit CD.
Technically, an analog signal contains nearly an infinite amount of information and high frequencies. However, the vast majority of it is beyond your hearing. And you get all sorts of distortion in the audible frequency range you don't get with a CD. You might prefer that sound but it's not better.
vinyl is a bad way to store an audio signal, they have to mess with the EQ and reverse it on playback, it's called the RIAA curve
it's just a fact that CD audio quality is better. plus not to mention the quality at the inner tracks on a record are noticeably lower quality than the outer tracks
Mr eve6 I have a genuine music question about this from your taste, Dolby Atmos “remasters” bullshit or actually good. We resisted Mono so I just can’t tell!
We’ve had the vinyl vs cd debate for decades it’s time to retvrn to tube vs solid state now there is a whole knew class of amplifier that only solid state can do(Class-D)
Tell me about how warm your Soviet tubes sound, I want to know the color of your opamps sound!
Well perhaps it would make it less commonplace but by no means would it eradicate or protect artists from piracy. There is almost always someone willing to go through the effort.
I lived vinyl. I hated it. What a pain in the ass. Even back then the preparation time was ridiculous. Clean the record, wipe the needle.... No thanks, my ears aren't that good.
Hard agree. At 66 I lived vinyl as well. Each time we changed medium, vinyl to tape, tape to cd, cd to digital... I heard things on the same song I hadn't heard previously.
Of course I was young and stupid then and spent a fortune on turntables and cartridges and some stupid anti static gun and special brushes. Marketing....
Don't forget the snap-and crackle box that hid all the clicks, and don't get me started about the Carver Auto Corrilator that restored dynamic range, reduced master tape hiss, and cut off the turntable's 10hz rumble 😎
I still gotta bulk purchase some cds i wanted for a while.
But there's a reason they're cheap:
Impossible to find a cd player nowadays.
I can literally only play them due to owning a laserdisc player.
I taught myself how to repair my thrift store CD player. Now, looking for another one by the same manufacturer. They're still some out there and 9 times out of 10 they just need their gooey or broken belt(s) replaced. I like 5-disc players.
Listen to the heart in blender song played badly by some cute theater boy who goes to a different high school in the backyard of a sort of friend’s house during a cast party like god intended.
I grew up with vinyl as a teen. I got to know every scratch and hiss on my favorite records. As normal consumers, most of us didn't treasure our albums like vintage comic books. Sometimes you'd forget to use the inner sleeve. Sometimes you'd bump the turntable. Scratches were inevitable.
Barbershop quartet is a superior format to both. I can’t even listen to music anymore unless it’s four dudes in straw hats and red/white striped vests.
I hear your Barbershop Quartet, and raise you a Mariachi Band
Though, the world will never be ready for having a Barbershop Quartet Mariachi Band Fusion Performance Genre. The constant minds blown would make too much of a mess to constantly clean up
Last summer I was walking in the park with my friend and his kid, and some family had hired an entire mariachi band to play for their kids bday. Pretty much the highlight of the summer
Ironic AF that a rock being dragged through a piece of plastic can sound more musical, feel more enjoyable than the latest whizz bang digital chips, unless you have very deep pockets.
Analog sounds better than current digital as long as you can play analog in a way that doesn't distort the sound or medium or the thing reading the medium.
More accurately reproducing the original wave form sounds better.
Records have their flaws.
So do CD.
So do the best digital encoding codecs.
Playboy magazine did an article on this about 30(?) years ago. It was rigged. They compared the analog masters (which 99.99% don't have access to) to the compact disc (which you could buy just about everywhere). Not surprisingly, they liked the masters better.
CD"s usually are compressed more than vinyl. Both have limitations. The SACD with uncompressed 24bit DSD audio has both greater a range of frequency and volume. Alas, they still exist but only as a niche market.
True I didn't mean to imply that CDs are superior. Technically, CD audio is not compressed, it's just that the bit-rate is lower than it should've been. Blame Sony. They insisted that the CD be compact AND be able to hold the entirety of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Let’s be honest, this is a musical production issue caused by the loudness wars. When the spectrogram of the cd looks like a wall vs the original vinyl recording of course the vinyl is gonna sound better.
This sums it up nicely. I've spent a lot of my nearly 69 years on Earth listening to music through all kinds of things, and there are so many factors between the original instruments or vocalist and the end product that you get commercially, that there is no way to say that one particular medium is
Bad artifacts can be introduced into sound very easily. Also remember no matter how digital the source is, you still have to listen to it with your analog ears. People have all kinds of ideas and ways to do what they think enhances sound, and for different media certain things
are done out of necessity that no one has much control over.
Just enjoy your music the best way you know how. I can definitely say I have not heard even a very high end system sound like a live performance. It can't. My Beats Studio Pro buds come close at times, but it still has to get to my ear.
Comments
*Me, listening to a CD version of Raw Power that is so crystal-clear, you can hear the lines of coke being cut in the background* this shit sucks
Though, usually that involves several fiction Cassette formats, designed to hold nearly 900KiB of data--a mind boggling amount of data to be carrying around; requiring several Megahertz to fully traverse effectively
Cds get scratched
Vinyl warps
Digital can degrade
We're talking about preference here, cassettes make me nostalgic
I love vinyl too. It sounds the richest! But everything has its place
At least not 8track
Old albums that were actually mixed and mastered with vinyl in mind do, in fact, sound better on vinyl.
New, digitally created releases, not so much.
CDs are the format of the proletarians
And cassettes, bc that's how I was able to get my first music (recording off the radio baybeeeee)
. Get a tube amp and you’ll be more amazed !
But it would have to be a pretty pricey turntable to sound better than a very basic CD player.
Besides, who wants 16-bit CDs in favour of (many) 24-bit streamed music, even when they're at home with HQ, wired audio? What good is copper wire if one end is a tin can? 🙂
it also presents the songs in the order the artist thought they should be listened to.
Today's Vinyl Choice #shorts | The Chris and Andre Show
Where its at is Bluray vs Laserdisc.
Plus, the shorter the program the more you pay attention to it.
Same with 45’s
LP’s people put on and hang around the turntable with a few distractions.
CD’s people put on and do chores.
Streaming people ignore
And —— I still have all the vinyl from when I was a kid so, y’know, why not listen to it? CD’s that are very old actually get oxidation pits on them - turns out the side where the info is printed is too thin on a lot of ‘em
This is why even cheap record players draw people to them....without them knowing why. Analogue.
PS. I would rather listen to great songs on a shitty transistor radio than Taylor Swift on a million buck sound system....
Mine hippest one had solo Bob Mould.
Youtube & Spotify etc.
https://youtu.be/xWV3PCbj254?si=MmNfn7dn2CKH37ml
24-bit digital downloads are infinitely more detailed than vinyl. That said, 16-bit CDs are well beyond what any adult can hear in dynamic range. Which is why is was so popular.
Wired: “Vinyl tastes better than CDs"
signal-to-noise ratio, channel separation, frequency range, etc.: objective
vinyl may sound better to some, but it’s much worse at faithfully reproducing recordings compared to CDs
halfway points on 2-disc albums, reading the little booklet, the inaugural ripping if you're listening on a computer, etc.
On an unrelated note, music sounds the best through a pirated mp3 download that has glitched out sections or 2 seconds of an entirely different song.
No fans of 8 tracks here LOL!
This kinda was forgotten during the mid 90s to late 2010s where everything on CD got brickwalled so it would still be loud on a crappy stereo. Some of the worst sounding cds I own are from that period.
It’s analog vs digital and sampling rates are so high now CD’s are much better, but the amplifier has to be analog and have Tubes. Or valves as they are known. They are all transistors now, solid state. Not in a Marshall stack
What is a CD?
vinyl is all about tactile experience. audio wise it tends towards mediocre but mostly listenable; the entire point is “i gave $ to an artist in order to touch an album and feel something physical, read liner notes, and fangirl over it”
i buy vinyl for touch, and for the occasional joy of “this artist made their gatefold into a popup book, your argument is invalid”
It. Depends. On. Mastering. If the same master was on a CD, it would be better.
Was way harder to do on Vinyl when it came to space on the medium.
My best sounding cds all are Slayer albums from the 80s before that started.
NO THANKS!
I prefer CD's - yes please!
I've got Wish You Were Here on vinyl which sounds great but my wife has Donny Osmond on vinyl which sounds shite.
Go figure.
(But even a well made MP3 on a hi fidelity system can in fact sound fantastic.)
jk I remember the cardinal theorem of interpolation from DSP
Vinyl and tube amps apply pleasurable distortions that may deviate from accuracy but the subjective impact is so good it's practically a drug.
this is why 7" records have to be 45rpm, because they'd sound even worse than they already do, if they were 33rpm like an LP.
that's why 45s have to be 45, otherwise they would sound even more like garbage than they already are!
Vinyl masters are way better and for this fact alone, vinyl sounds way better than most CDs. One of the benefits of Apple Music and Spotify is that record companies have actually released better masters of CDs.
Years ago we got her first keyboard, Kurzweil MC-88. Later a Yamaha S90, and now she has a MP11-SE Kawaii that has a genuine action like a piano.
She keeps her music library on her iPad, and uses a pedal to turn the pages. LIVE MUSIC!
Bonus, you can play a CD in a portable device.
All them $ for a very small difference is just a show off thing.
Now, when the "remastered" CD comes out, you can hear a difference and that's when they start to sound like shit.
If you grew up on remasters, you will think the old stuff is garbage.
The Remaster of Duran Duran's Rio is absolute shite. I am always looking for the OG CD of that one.
It doesn't matter what format you listen to, it matters what music you enjoy.
Gimme 90s death metal on tape in a crappy car or King Crimson on Flac througn my (lovely) home stereo.
It's all good.
You could listen to Ed Sheeran on the best stereo ever lol.
You may lose some quality off the top, but no degradation.
Same reason why movies are recorded on 35mm first, and native 4k from a master.
And when they did, they chose to go digital!
Like the hiss for the tape process in analog recordings that "colors" vinyl recordings = extraneous noise!
With CD, like streaming you can shuffle and skip.
it's just a fact that CD audio quality is better. plus not to mention the quality at the inner tracks on a record are noticeably lower quality than the outer tracks
Tell me about how warm your Soviet tubes sound, I want to know the color of your opamps sound!
(Twinge!... Owch... 😒)
Vinyl now just sounds scratchy to me.
But there's a reason they're cheap:
Impossible to find a cd player nowadays.
I can literally only play them due to owning a laserdisc player.
#retrogrouch
Though, the world will never be ready for having a Barbershop Quartet Mariachi Band Fusion Performance Genre. The constant minds blown would make too much of a mess to constantly clean up
But like it or not, it's true for most budgets.
https://landing.wadax.eu/studio-player/
More accurately reproducing the original wave form sounds better.
Records have their flaws.
So do CD.
So do the best digital encoding codecs.
Live is best.
That is, unless your original source is digital.
Like what you like and don't try to tell people they're wrong for liking it. (Mainly directed at the "Vinyl is superior" people.)
Bad artifacts can be introduced into sound very easily. Also remember no matter how digital the source is, you still have to listen to it with your analog ears. People have all kinds of ideas and ways to do what they think enhances sound, and for different media certain things
Just enjoy your music the best way you know how. I can definitely say I have not heard even a very high end system sound like a live performance. It can't. My Beats Studio Pro buds come close at times, but it still has to get to my ear.