I have all mediums. LPs, CDs, Tape and I stream. I enjoy them all and still collect Vinyl, CDs and tapes. Each has their own characteristics. Love music first!
C'mon, CD is a 40 years old technology, from today's perspective it is almost as ancient as vinyl. It is also a physical medium anyway. People who remember the CD introduction are old today.
@@voytecco6104 I worked in a record store at precisely the time when CDs came in and vinyl was sold off cheap. The 'industry' pushed CDs so hard, retailers thought vinyl was dying out like the dinosaurs and it almost did go away completely, before the revival.
Reason and reasoning and analyzing makes peopel always to enjoy things less. Asa Spiritualô peopel who do mediation, sports travels and enjoy life say the more you analyze some content or hobby the less you enjoy it at the moment... because enjoyment doesnt come muchfrom head or brain but from body, "thoughts are in mind, feelings are in body" And scientists of neurosciencea nd spirituality and end epigenetics say Heart has its own brain, and wisdom, and electromagnetic field, but its not based pon yanalyzis and loc or resaon etc.
Maybe Davids reasomn was that while he ois listening and enjoying music....he doesnt want to be in aanalytical state of analyzing it. Because enjoying isnt coming from brain, music is energy, enjoyment is energy, its not logical or analytical thing.
How many times does this have to be said? There are recordings on vinyl that are not on CD and never will be. There are recordings on CD that are not on vinyl and never will be. The smart ones in the pack know and make room for both.
yeah but deep in your heart you always have a preference... if the price is the same I always prefer vinyl, they just sound better to me. I end up buying lots of CDs because vinyl prices are crazy.
@@scottgates601 i know, thing is, if you leave the price out of the equation it's easier to know which is your favorite format. Price being equal I prefer vinyl. In the real world I buy a lot of CDs bc vinyl is too expensive. Did you get the idea?
Sound engineer here. A couple things about one aspect of the discussion. You are very much correct in your general argument about audio being an "illusion" in that a performance captured with a microphone is not an accurate representation of what we would hear standing in that room. That said, vinyl (and any other analog format for that matter) IS very much imparting a sound. What we call warmth (which very much is a widely accepted term) is unquestionably a form of DISTORTION. Now, most of us love it, but Dave is very much correct in that if you were present in the control room at the recording studio were the artists/producers were making decisions, or even at the mastering studio, you wouldn't be hearing the distortion that vinyl is imparting. And in that regard, digital audio is a much more ACCURATE representation of any signal that it's captured, what the artists/engineers were hearing in the control room. This is not an opinion, this is a verifiable scientific fact that digital audio recordings are more accurate than analog ones. Now the important thing when it comes to music is that 99 times out of 100 when you compare a digital audio release to a vinyl release, you are comparing different MASTERS. Even if the lathe is being cut with the digital master (as is often the case these days), the cutting engineer is tweaking the signal to optimize it for that format. Naturally, that would exacerbate the differences between one and the other, and it's fine to prefer one over the other. But it's important to understand the science behind what each format is.
Good points. I work in audio too. The real issue is the dynamics destruction of CD / digital post 1993. It's left Loudness Wars remasters of practically all major rock/pop in the streaming systems. Part of the vinyl revival fetish -apart from pink noise - groove rubbing 'warmth' - is the dynamic range still being baked in via the formats limitations. Pre 1993 CDs will be the digital Rosetta Stones of popular music.
@@1998mchp I agree! What the recording industry has done to the CD as a digital sound carrier is pure crime. But that only speaks of the flexibility and possibilities of this medium, which far surpasses vinyl. The industry would do the same to vinyl if that medium could handle it dynamically. What saved vinyl was its limitation and narrow dynamic range.
@@ljuboizsiska5448 majority of music released on CD wasn't compressed to its limits, this is only a minor portion of it, mostly pop rock destined for US radio. I listen to mostly jazz, world, prog and acoustic music and honestly can't say I have a single CD that is a victim of the loudness wars.
Glad you acknowledged how badass Dave is though. Learned so much about classical from you both, and there are solid arguments on both sides of this debate.
Dave has every right to his life experiences either CD’s and. vinyl! Record resellers in my area, Tacoma/Seattle won’t buy or sell classical music except to put it in a dollar clearance bin! Dave has been a lonely voice on You Tube discussing classical music with joy on his face and in his voice! Thanks to both of you for bringing some light to classical music!
A few years back I bought some classical LPs and operas from a Seattle record shop. The guy tried to pass off like, three entire boxes of classical to me for free because they just don't sell. I might have taken him up if I hadn't walked to the store. I love classical LPs and it's fun to get like, five records for the price of one "good" condition rock record but it's a hobby thing, I'd never pretend it sounds better than CD. (honestly half the reason I buy LP operas is that it has a giant libretto included, sometimes I just get it for that and put it on cd/streaming, especially if it's one of those opera sets with the annoying autochanger sides)
off course there is but with 1.8 grams at least with 50 to 60 years none has worn out , needles ,yes, maybe 12 since 71, had only two by this time but know i own 28 turntables of high quality , i colect hi-fi components
@@michaelrovner4165 why not?the sound is better but lower and is still friction like any other stylus, as the record isn´t played by the MC cartridge but for the stylus in it
I don't disagree, but I don't know how relevant it is. How many times would you have to play a record before there was *actual, noticeable* degradation in the sound? I bet it would be many thousands - probably more than is realistically possible, unless you listen to the same record multiple times a day for a long time. And how exactly would you measure the degradation, especially if it's something that happens very gradually over time?
I just received a Japanese CD of some Vinyl I had. Its fidelity and dynamics completely blows away its vinyl counterpart in sound quality. Its all a matter of speakers and amplification with CDs that supposedly sound worse than vinyl. Classical music is a revelation on CD because of it full range and lack of unwanted noise caused by a friction based reproduction method.
I have a big vinyl collection ( 4000 , jazz, classical, blues, rock ) and a very big CD collection and I prefer CDs for many reasons, quality, price, format... ( with all respect to the LP collector ... )
Ok. I've listened to 3 minutes and a history lesson is called for. First, he compares the high price tag of today's vinyl to cds, and how cds were "so" expensive when they came out. He wasn't alive in the 1980's, so he's basing his comments on what he has read. Cds were about twice the cost of vinyl when they came out. I remember paying around $15. While cds went up in cost to around $20 in the following 10 years, their prices have come back down to their original release prices. Vinyl is selling for between 5 to 15 times their original release price. What must be factored in is the lack of original recording costs of repressed records. So while it's true there are costs related to remastering, it does not compare to original recording costs. Btw, I used the Feds. Inflation calculator and determined that the $3.50 price I paid for an album in 1975 would cost $21.31 in today's money. Not $40. And not $60 to $125 charged by Acoustic Productions for their premiere re-releases. That being said I am a fan and collector of those releases, and purchase both the vinyl and SACD versions.
I am reprinting the comment I made after I watched the Dave Hurwitz video. Young folk (those under 65 - I am 79) often do not consider mobility issues that can present themselves as they age. As one grows older, it gets much easier to play CDs. I still love vinyl, and the care I took with my collection minimized pops, clicks, and annoying scratches. Sometimes, when I play vinyl, one would think it's digitized because of the lack of surface noise. Anyway, here is the edited comment I left for Dave and am now leaving for you: 'Mobility matters, too. I may not be up-to-date on what is out there, but CDs play longer than vinyl without needing to turn or change an LP. Or, gasp, have one vinyl drop on top of another. There are multi-disc CD changers that give listeners hours of music without needing to reload. Like Dave, I prefer to own physical product. With the amount of music DH discusses, I am often inspired to listen to the music of the day if it's in my library or buy it on CD if it's not. CD convenience enables me to listen longer and ensure that I do not have too many opportunities to fall.
Yes, and, cds do not degrade with every listen, like vinyl. Those pops and clicks from the first play on were annoying and distracted from the enjoyment of the music.
Either you're looking great for your age, or you're too young to remember than even before CDs took over, many Classical music fans were already switching from vinyl records to cassette tapes, because it freed them from getting up to flip records in the middle of a long piece, and from the surface noise and inner groove distortion of vinyl. The introduction of metal tape and Dolby C NR in 1980 allowed cassettes to approach the quality of reel-to-reel and to make audibly indistinguishable copies of mint-condition LPs and live radio broadcasts, and by 1981, digitally-mastered pre-recorded cassettes of classical works were already becoming common, just in time for the Walkman to revolutionize music listening -- Beethoven was no longer chained to the living room!
My first vinyl purchase was the justly famous Reiner Scheherazade on RCA Living Stereo when it was initially released (in 1960) so you know how old I am! I love vinyl especially for the opportunity it gave for great album cover art and inserts that were large enough to be readable. But the ritual necessary to keep them clean and the constant hunt for vinyl that wasn't warped (even when new) was a continual horror show. Digital formats make storage simpler (and nonexistent if you stream) and now the resolution is good enough to equal or exceed the analog versions, and the warmth that was missing in the earliest digital recordings has been largely restored. So I agree with Dave.
We have a mint vinyl collection. In the early 1980's we started to buy CD's and our vinyl collection sat abandoned on our shelves for 40 years. A few weeks ago I told my wife we should sell our vinyl collection and she said "NO". We dug out our Rega turntable and started to listen to our LP's again. Tears flowed from our eyes. The sound struck deep emotional chords - the music was so natural and so beautiful. We have since listened exclusively to our vinyl records. And we are now buying vinyl records again, starting with the Deutsche Grammophon "Original Source" releases. Vinyl is not convenient. But we are willing to pay the price.
I regularly don’t agree with Dave’s reviews but on this topic of vinyl vs CD I have to agree with him. I have several thousand classical LPs and been collecting for 40+ years. I regularly listen to the LPs, mainly because of what’s on them that hasn’t been transferred to any other medium. I love the LPs, don’t get me wrong, but (1) the surface noise / clicks are omnipresent and super annoying in quiet passages. I have professional level equipment (Thorens) and the LPs are cleaned before every playing. It doesn’t take mishandling (as you call it) to get them, it’s omnipresent dust for one. (2) the quality of sound is highly variable from one LP to the next, there is considerable fluctuation due to the quality of the pressing. You don’t know what you get until you place it on the record player. CDs don’t have this problem, or the variability is much much less. (3) the price of modern LPs is insane. Using an inflation argument to say that they cost the same as back ‘in the days’ is silly. The Bruckner set you showed is 300 Euros on LP and 40 on CD (with lossless Blu-ray Disc included). I’m sorry, but the factor of almost 10 difference isn’t worth it. Not to mention convenience of format etc.
1. I had the same issue with surface noise. But I found out it was due to bad set up and entry level turntable, phono stage and specifically the cartridge. Once I understood my set up I was able to get my record playing experience to sound lovely, quiet and dynamic. No surface noise and no pops and clicks. 2. Yea i can agree that not all pressing plants are equal. But for the most part most new records are overall good. 3. You don’t have to buy vinyl. That’s the great thing about this hobby-you can love 💿 CD, vinyl records or streaming. You can have Bluetooth or stream. It’s beautiful.
I agree with you and even in this thread that is under your opinion one says you need better equipment so you won't hear the noise. It's almost a religion in that if you take notice of the religion's deficiencies it's because you aren't believing hard enough.
@@keithwiebe1787 I hear you. My system is entry-mid level. But I did begin with a $200 table, a $120 phono stage and $100 cartridge. The surface noise level was audible to the point where I was like dang. The pops and clicks made me say dang Vinyl sucks when I played dirty records. Even today I have to be careful with my set up. If I don’t use well shielded cartridge and or rca cables I can hear AM radio coming through my speakers. But again, I don’t think we need to spend mega church money to hear these improvements but spending more will allow you to hear the difference.
I'm 58 years old, which means I've passed the vinyl and CD era. I remember when I heard the first CD in my life; Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. I was amazed by the ease of handling and the clarity of the sound, devoid of any artifacts and noise. At that time, as a kid, I had quite a vinyl collection, but I continued to buy vinyl only in cases where I couldn't find the album I was looking for on CD. Today, I have a high-end system whose value is in the neighborhood of 250,000 Euros and is completely based on a digital sound source. I don't have a single vinyl today. However, I have several thousand CDs and I still obsessively buy CDs wherever I can get hold of them, usually in bulk. I feel that I need to have a physical copy of the music I like because I think the foundations of music streaming are very shaky, especially in this geopolitical situation. I have no problem imagining a situation in which I wake up in the morning and my Tidal service does not work together with the entire Internet. I'm thinking of giving an analog source of music a chance, but it won't be vinyl, but reel-to-reel tape. If I already want an analog source, then let it be the best analog source. In that case, I would look for analog recorded music on tape and digitally recorded music on CD. I know it's not easy and it's expensive, but that's the hobby. As for the vinyl itself... I'd rather have acute attacks of hemorrhoids every 5 days than deal with vinyl again. CD quality reproduction has advanced tremendously and today's top DACs sound incredible. A lot of people, especially young people, embraced vinyl because it was the first time they heard music that wasn't MP3 and didn't come through cheap headphones.
If you want to shut yourself off to some amazing sounding music on vinyl, it's up to you, I guess, but really, as a "music lover" you seem to be very closed down
I'm also 58 and remember when everyone had to have a copy of albums like Bridge Over Troubled Water then CDs of Love over Gold, Brothers in Arms etc. Sometimes I wondered if people actually played them. I no longer have CDs nor Vinyl - just Spotify premium from a Sony phone to the highest form of Bose 360 blutooth speaker.
@@frankgarcia9834 I don't want the focus of this discussion to turn to the price of the equipment. Today, systems can be put together for fractions of that price that sound quite alright. The higher you climb with the price, the smaller the return, i.e. the smaller the improvement in sound quality. I have reached my limit. Everyone has their priorities in life. I like a lot of things, among other things, let's say cars. I could buy a nice little ultra racer for that money, but priorities. I enjoy listening to music much more than driving a car. I've seen all-digital systems that cost double and triple the price. I've seen a DAC that costs $120,000. But that's for the big guys who don't even know how much they paid for it.
@@bachtozappa cool…the good thing about capitalism is that you don’t have to buy a record if you can’t afford it. Also you have the option of not buying it if you want it.
@@Staybrown11that's not about buying, that's about the fact that vynils ARE expensive, and I say that loving Vynils... but they often costs from 3x up to 10x of the same music on CD.
@@BlackMoonGaming agree. Some specialized vinyl are more expensive than CD. But why focus on that small amount of small runs of limited edition vinyl. There are $80 cd’s on eBay. There’s $150 cd on record stores. The focus on limited edition is just misleading. Most vinyl records cost about the same as a new CD. And yes $50 for a vinyl is a lot of money but that’s not most.
@@Staybrown11 but that's not only for limited editions. most of the albums for most of the music generes are more expensive as Vynil.. at least twice as much... maybe I'm just unluky, but this is my experience. And I'm saying this loving Vynils a lot more than CDs..
Glad you're posting on youtube again! I enjoy Dave's reviews. I had to hurry off to the thrift shop with my Norrington CDs after learning how bad they are. I drank deep of the vinyl chalice when I ABd a 1980s DG Leitner Kempff Beethoven PC3 CD with tuttis that didn't sound quite right, with the earlier LP which remained detailed and transparent in climaxes.
Spot on and thank you for responding as it saves me the effort. Clicks and pops are a dated issue with vinyl. Current quality products are virtually noise free and will stay that way with rather simple and proper care. A good vacuum record cleaner will take care of most issues with older vinyl. Of course, scratches are forever but they are not the result of exercising proper care. The DG Bruckner set is outstanding.
@@ArtyFactual_IntelligenceI bought mine directly from DG at a much better price. Classical music will never sell like pop singers and somebody has to pay for the mixing and mastering. And there are 17 disks.
Am just watching your vid on our TV & sifting through comments simultaneously on my device, as I regularly do. Someone correct me but for the YT subject matter of (Vinyl, Classical, CD music) I am BLOWN AWAY by the number of comments already after just 1 day (420+ as of Sunday 5pm CST)!!! That's a huge response in a short time frame. Re: your vid (I'm 15mins in so far), I LOVE your format of responding by segment or section relative to his takes. Kudos. I watch both his CH and yours of course. I own 3,000 LPs and 700 CDs and am a big ROON user throughout home & office for 6 yrs or so. Love all tgese formats and each have their time & place for 🎶 enjoyment .
I admire you for your patience dealing with THAT person who incites pandaemonium in one clip and then feigns innocence as to why on earth ppl start attacking him. Love you channel btw. Just bought the new vinyl Bruckner/ Giulini. Highly recommended.
This video repeats the tired old myth that digital audio somehow inferior because of sampling, that the reproduced analog output will be 'smoother' with increased sampling rates. DACs can produce perfectly smooth analog waves up to half the the sampling frequency. So, CDs can easily reproduce up to 20kHz, which is the upper limit of human hearing in young people. And, 16bit allows for 96dB of dynamic range, which is much more any consumer analog format does. th-cam.com/video/UqiBJbREUgU/w-d-xo.html Rip your vinyl to digital using a high qualtity ADC. Play back that digital file and it will be indistinguishable from vinyl.
The fault in digital reproduction does not lie in the principle of Nyquist sampling, which is provably correct. The problem is that DACs need to do a lot of on-the-fly computation to overcome flawed implementation (e.g. problems of filters). So digital to analog conversion is very complicated, and doing it well costs a lot more than most people are willing to spend. DACs are still improving, over 40 years since the CD was introduced. But if you give me $5,000 with which to buy either a turntable and preamp, or a CD transport and DAC, I probably will get better sound by spending it on the turntable and phono preamp.
@@TheOriginalDrastic I've heard very high end digital and analog setups. While high end analog sounds really good, I don't find anything special over digital. So, I prefer digital for great sound quality, convenience and low cost of music.
@@bikeman7982 I agree. If I were tasked with spending $50,000 on either an analog or digital front end, that would be a hard choice. My own setup has both, and often I prefer the sound of a digital source. Both turntables and CD players have evolved, improved, and seem to be converging to the point that it's arguably a matter of taste.
I think that chart which represents digital audio as a sort of bar graph has done more damage to the understanding of how digital audio works than anything else in history. You can't imagine the number of people who think that digital audio is like, playing back a square wave, as opposed to using a DAC to reproduce the analog signal.
I think all your points are spot on, and so are Dave's! Let him rant a little! I don't think he's taking himself too seriously here. His channel is amazing, I have learned a lot about classical from him.
The big problem is that every inherent problem LPs have is exacerbated with classical music. Surface noise is especially bad in music with important quiet sections. Inner groove distortion is especially bad in a genre which tends to have loud, spectacular endings. Dynamic range compression is a problem in a genre with an enormous amount of dynamic range. I love classical LPs. I love listening to LPs, and it's a wonderfully cheap way to get into the hobby (if you've seen the prices of old pop/rock records, you know what I mean). But there is a reason classical listeners were the first to mcoe to CD.
Dragging a rock through a spiral groove on a rotating piece of plastic is so 1899 technology - that was the year that Emile Berliner debuted his flat disc.
At one time, in the mid-80s, I had something like three or four thousand LPs, mostly classical, but lots of jazz and pop, too. (I was a reviewer and got lots of freebies.) But when the CD came along, I was taken with its lucid sound quality and ease of use. I was frankly tired of all the fussing and putzing around with LPs and the equipment and work required to produce the best sound quality. I don't begrudge anyone their love of LPs and the rituals related to them. I don't even doubt that the analog sound they produce at their best may have a magic that CDs can't equal. But I've lived happily with CDs for 35 years now and I'm too damned old to even think about going back.
The new equipment and needles are making the vinyls sound less noisy, even the old one's. You need vinyl to be considered serious as a DJ by the new generation. There is still moviment and marketing around vinyl because of it's exclusivity inside the club scene. So better cheaper pre-amps and mixers, you'd be amazed if you come back solely to listen to very loud music and not finding any surface noise
I like the term “convincing “ vs. “warmer”. Really good video. Thanks for posting. Also, I agree with the comment about the Keith Jarrett concert. I recently bought an original pressing of this that visually looked to be near mint. There were so many pops and crackles on this that I could not enjoy the music and will never play it again.
I’m in the first clump. I never totally gave it up and still have pretty much every LP I ever bought, starting in 1972, when I was in 6th grade. But I also have a pretty extensive CD collection. More recently (roughly 20 years ago), I started collecting used open reels.
I lived through that era, and at the time, DMM was a godsend for many labels. For instance, in the early 80s, it was still more difficult to purchase EMI pressings than Angel in the U.S. But once Angel came out with DMM, it made a huge difference. The records were more quiet and they had more transparency. Even on the used market, I’m willing to pick up an Angel, IF it is DMM.
Records are way too expensive. Regardless of the reason, they're ridiculously expensive. And this is coming from someone who happily buys $150 One Steps.
For me, I'm format agnostic. The master comes first. I *really* enjoy listening to records, though sometimes must admit the pressing or transfer just isn't up to par. With vinyl, that sucks because of the often high outlay. Though yes, sometimes that happens with CD and streaming too, though the outlay is easier to eat.
I have several Bruckner Symphonies none of which are on vinyl, CD, 8-track, or streaming. I now buy my music from nativeDSD. These are DSD downloads of DSD64 and DSD256. Direct Stream Digital (DSD) uses a very high sampling rate to capture audio. The standard DSD format has a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz, which is 64 times the CD audio sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. DSD256, has a sampling rate of 11.2 MHz. Bruckner sounds fantastic!
From my experience working in record stores in their heyday, a lot of people did Not change their stylus often enough causing wearing. I had inspected records brought in by customers saying they weren't sounding like they did before. These records were generally spotless but yes, did sound worn. The question I posed to them was, how often do you play records and when was the last time you replaced your stylus. In some cases they hadn't been changed for years because they thought a diamond stylus should last forever. Secondly, people had generic record players back then, where the balance and skating were factory set, because high end players were generally out of most people's financial reach. Also the technology of the time was not what it is today. As a result records did tend to wear. CDs on the other hand are not indestructible as originally advertised. They can scratch and skip, their surface CAN deteriorate over time losing part or all of the data on the cd.
I agree with the old man. IF you listen to classical.... then SACD. with a SACD player/system that processes actual DSD, will be your best friend. Its literally better in every stat over vinyl. The rest is coloration and system specific. If you have thousands into a basic cleaning system, which is what basic vacuums and ionic cleaners actually cost, and you have thousands into cartridges, isolation, phono stages, tube amps, etc... I bet your analog system sounds wonderful. If your vinyl has a single digital process, then what is the point??? Most vinyl records "now a days" are digital. WHY not just go HiRes SACD/DSD, it's the closest source. Even streaming is getting good. I use Amazon Prime, most of the albums I listen to are 24/192. I UNDESRTAND I have some AAA albums from the popular retailers who care about vinyl, Acoustic Sounds, etc. They sound great...when they are engineered and mastered correctly. ( UHQR, for 150 bucks) It's really not worth the cash difference to a 35-dollar SACD/DSD source.
Check your SACDs, CDs, DSDs out on an audio editor. 'Audacity' is free. Look at the clipping, the compression and the 'louding' that you are listening to on most of them.
As a working musician who listens more frequently to live music than to recordings, I’ve come to notice the bias (or in a more positive light, the ‘point of view’) of modern classical music production/engineering. Some of my listening favorites are older recordings of what Dave might call ‘unlistenable recording quality), partially because I don’t mind filling-in the missing timbres, articulations, etc. through audiation, but also because I sometimes find these live and older recordings to be less ‘fussy’ and more straightforward in their audible bias (for example favoring the downstage instruments dramatically, or in the case of pre-electric recordings, significantly disadvantaging the upper frequency-range). On the other side, I’ve had so many young and new listeners come to me after their first live performance complaining that they ‘couldn’t hear the soloist at all’ or something suggesting that the balance and clarity of a live orchestral performance struck them as totally unfamiliar having only heard recordings. I think in some sense good engineering and production are spoiling us!
The problem with the video is, of course, that David Hurwitz has been unable to comment on your various remarks - and I think we both know that he would have a lot to say in response to your comments. I gave up vinyl decades ago because local New Zealand pressings at the time were dreadful - and I've never considered returning to it. I think the first CDs were poor but they have improved enormously over the decades. I personally love SACD and direct stream digital (DSD) in general.
Bad "Loudness War" Mastering has given CD's and digital audio a bad name which this format/medium does not deserve ! I personally startet buying vinyl records back in 2003 because many so called "re-mastered" cd's I owened were totally over compressed, de-noised to dead and just sounded bad compared to old vinyl records from the 70's which had the original mastering on them. So: STOP THE DAMN LOUDNESS WAR !! My 2 cents..
I was there when CDs first came out. My brother purchased the first Sony CDP-101 CD player shortly after its release in the early 80s. I got my first CD player, a Realistic CD-1000 in 1984. There was an issue with the mastering of some early CDs due to companies using LP masters to create CD masters. Once this issue was resolved, the sonic advantages of CDs, their greater dynamic range, lack of surface noise, zero wow and flutter, etc meant I no longer longed for the "warmth" of vinyl. I then started replacing all my LPs with CDs and the only LPs I still own were never released on CD. I still have all those CDs I purchased in the mid 80s and 40 years later they still play without issue.
Dear Mr, thank you so much for your analysis👍🏻Most of the times I don't agree with Mr.Hurwitz but it seems he thinks he's the only person who is right🤔I always listen with my ears and with my heart👍🏻
i regularly listen to you. and Dave. I think you both will agree more with each other than disagree on this vinyl / CD issue. I feel Dave is actually indirectly ranting about the die hard fans of either medium who have become entrenched and close minded. In reality, what really matters (to me) is the mastering or remastering, rather than the medium.
I loved vinyl back in the 70s, but I am not nostalgic enough to get up and turn the record over, put records back in the sleeve, take out of the sleeve. Streaming is just so convenient. Yes, i miss the large format, liner notes, lyrics, graphics, but not enough to get back into it.
Very interesting video Michael. I think that in the end you both agree on the fundamental point: it is a case by case basis and how can it not be when there are so many variables entering the value stream, from the recording venue up to each listener’s audio equipment. I own a lot of vinyl and a lot of CDs/SACDs, so I don’t have a preference but in the end it is the performance that matters (I am talking classical music here). Not closing the door to CDs, again in the classical music genre, does allow one to access pretty much everything that was done in that genre since the mid-80s or so when classical music record companies abadonned vinyl. A lot of smaller independent labels (BIS, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi to name a few) have issued glorious records of classical music which are not available on vinyl. Should one shut oneself out from that music because « vinyl sounds better than CDs » ? I for one do not want to, but to each his own.
Living in Italy and far far away from my boxed-and-sealed vinyl records, I've had to collect hi-rez vinyl and CDs off of the internet, to restore my collection to what it was a long time ago. Dealing thusly in digital, I get to see every piece of music on my audio editor. I've found that since about 1995, most if not all CDs are either 'louded', actively compressed, or heavily compressed and clipping the zero point. When I acquire a digital source, the first thing I do is put it up on my editor and check the waveform. At least half of all my acquisitions are compressed and worthless to me, and they get dumped. I've found that all of the vinyl hi-rez digital acquisitions have the normal vinyl waveforms and dynamics, and that's all I will settle for. The older 80s CDs maintained the original dynamics of the recordings, so they go into the collection. More than half of the corporate hi-rez SACDs in print are compressed as well. Believe it or not. Sources from independent hi-end producers are perfectly fine in any medium (CD,SACD,vinyl), and they go into the collection, to enjoy. My point is that CDs not made by independent companies are inevitably compressed, louded, and some are downright clipped. Go rip a CD and look at it on a free editor if you need to be convinced. I'm staying with my vinyls and older CDs. Digitize your vinyls well, do some restoration if you know how, and enjoy your music!
I love DH and I’ve got to admit earlier on in the week when I saw the thumbnail of his CD versus Vinyl video I couldn’t help worrying “Oh no was it me droning on about the affordability and merits of the original Decca release of War Requiem that sent Dave over the edge”. Totally in line with my personality I could not face watching his video nor this one yet. Anyway if it was me I’m ever so sorry everyone and pledge to rein in my droning about mono and the like in comments sections!
The basic problem people underestimate _vastly_ is the placebo effect. Most people think it's something nebulous that one has to strain to really hear. But the placebo effect doesn't work like this at all! It's MUCH more insidious in a way. First of all, the difference you "hear" is very obvious and leaving no doubt. In the late 1980s everybody and his mother heard the obvious difference between a regular CD and a gold-plated CD. And before that there was a clear difference heard between CDs and the same CDs whose edges were painted with a green marker. If you are old enough to remember the '80s, you'll recall the ads for those "special green markers" in the audiophile press. It was amazing. And yet, it's all 100% fictitious. Contradiction? No, it turns out that's how our brains work. Bottom line is that in double-blind (that's critical) tests over past 40 years nobody was able to hear any difference between signal X versus the same signal X sent through 10 (ten) pairs of A/D-D/A converters in a _row._ Likewise, nobody in such tests was ever able to tell a CD from SACD. I am very glad CDs are available, never liked the bother of the vinyl. And I go to live classical concerts a lot too.
Listening and hearing the difference between SACD and normal CD was a revelation to me, a very unwanted one at the time because I thought there could not actually be any difference and it was all a silly marketing ploy. The clarity and smoothness of the DSD (sacd) format was and is very apparent if you listen through good equipment. It needs to be actually recorded in DSD not just up-sampled from PCM. The difference in these two digital formats is actually what helped bring me closer to Vinyl because vinyl is another step towards clarity and smoothness. I agree placebo is real but true DSD is a the real deal. Try using the Pine player if you are on osx or foobar2000 on windows (both freeware). Take some time A/B with good headphones you will hear the difference.
Thanks for this. The stangest part of Dave's argumenet is the new and improved discussion. What didnlt they make cars at the turn of the centure like they are made today.? Why didnlt they maked televisions as good as today? Why didn't the Brits have good food back in the 50s and 60s as they do today 🙂
I’m old enough to have grown up with records. When CD came out I couldn’t afford it but assumed it really was perfect sound forever. When I bought my first house and built my listening room it was at first all CD. Vinyl was almost nonexistent back then. Only after it was done I heard a Linn and it sounded so good I had to get a turntable. The next few years I was playing records and CD about equally. One night my wife said, “It’s so quiet!” I thought she meant surface noise. No. She means the CD has more noise! Wtf!?! My wife taught me something very valuable: with records the noise rides above and separate from the music. Like people coughing at a concert. With digital the noise is interwoven into the music. The music is the noise. CD turns music into noise. Records don’t do that.
@nicksterj Actually if you read it again more carefully and this time thinking it through more you will see the digital conversion itself is in fact the source of the noise.
@nicksterj My wife would beg to differ. Women don't care about technical jargon. They only care how the music sounds. When they tell you your precious digital sounds like noise you should listen.
The problem with classical vinyl is with a dynamic range much greater other genres (in today’s equivalent mastered at say -24 LUFS rather than -14), noise is more distracting. I like piano recordings on vinyl - especially when the instruments were miked close to soundboard the medium helps mellow out the hardness - but the records really do have to be pristine. Likewise jazz just plain sounds better on vinyl. For orchestral recordings, violins can sound better but you practically lose the bottom octave of double basses which is produced more transparently on cd. Important to note that these Kingsway Hall, Concertgebouw etc recordings were done to tape, so reel to reel would be ideal way to listen to them, not vinyl. And even in the days of early digital you had great recordings, such as Haitink’s Bruckner 9 from 1981 or Giulini’s LAPO recordings. It all depends!
After viewing both videos and reading all the comments, I think there is a major point that has been ignored in the discussion. That of availability. Since the mid 1980s (forty years ago!), the overwhelming majority of classical music releases, as well as every operatic and chamber music recording that I know of, were only released on CD. There was no option if one wanted to listen to the latest recording by older artists such as Gilels, Bernstein, Arrau or von Karajan or new artists such as Salonen, Mullova, Bartoli and Jarvi. It was either CD or nothing until the somewhat recent arrival of streaming. Some sounded really fine and some not so much. But being a music lover first, I thought it absolutely ridiculous to totally ignore two generations of artists that I admired previously or discovered on CD. Also, think of the amount of unfamiliar music that has been released during the same period on CD only - Complete Sibelius on BIS, the many Naxos issues of unknown and/or unrecorded composers, the HIP movement and Baroque Operas - all available on CD only. I should also mention the audio restoration of historical recordings done by Ward Marston, Mark Obert-Thorn and Andreas Meyer. Their work, found almost solely on CD, has been truly spectacular on labels like Marston Records, Music and Arts and Sony. Sony's and Warner's recent "Mega Boxes" releases afford music lovers to enjoy legendary (and sometimes unjustly neglected) artists at incredible prices. For example, one can purchase the 95 CD set the Complete EMI Columbia, HMV, Electrola and Parlophone Recordings of Otto Klemperer mastered by Art & Son Studio for the price of one original EMI Columbia stereo LP. Before anyone thinks I'm just some CD fanatic, the majority of my collection is vinyl which started with a 45 of "Little" Steve Wonder's "Fingertips, Part One and Two" that I purchased in 1963 at the age of five and I'm waiting for the arrival of DG's Original Source LP von Karajan Bruckner Symphony set more than sixty years later! I've never found the process of cleaning LPs (both vacuum and ultrasonic) to be an inconvenience and take my turntable to my local audio dealer to be checked regularly for stylus wear and various adjustments. Some of the greatest recordings I own are on LP. And some are on CD. It is as simple as that! One other point I believe should be addressed is that of the, at times contentious if not hostile, relationship regarding classical music and audiophile reviewers. I think I can speak on this subject being a reader of High Fidelity, Stereo Review (both deceased), Fanfare, Gramophone, as well as Absolute Sound (since Issue #1), Stereophile, and The Tracking Angle. I also watch classical music and audiophile videos found on TH-cam. In the vast majority of cases, the audiophile critic when reviewing a recording will only cite a handful of other audiophile recordings of the work disregarding the rest. For example, an audiophile critic reviewing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring will compare the usual highly regarded sonically recording (all analogue and LP versions only) - Solti/Decca, Bernstein/Columbia 6 eye and maybe, Markevitch/EMI and conclude with their choice of recording. A music critic, especially one who has been doing it for many years, will compare a dozen or more recordings concluding with the one he or she interpretively prefers. The head butting occurs when the music critic has the attitude of how can the audiophile critic recommendation be taken seriously when he/she hasn't heard a majority of the recordings of the work reviewed. Flip the coin over and you'll find the audiophile critic questioning the music critic opinions citing their substandard audio equipment or preference to digital. Both are somewhat ridiculous. When I bought my 1st LP of the Rite (Bernstein/Columbia) in the early 70s, there were around 15 to 20 recordings available. Now, there must be over 100 or more. There are simply to many recordings of the standard repertoire available. And if the music critic derives pleasure from their audio system and prefers digital to analogue, so be it. In the early 70s, I had a Panasonic system with a Garrard turntable and enjoyed every LP I played. And think of the arguments between the two groups themselves - ERC Records a few years ago, for example. Sorry to ramble on so long but I'm hoping that a few of you will appreciate what this old-timer has to say. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be around when there is so much great classical music available in all formats, LPs, CDs, SACDs and streaming. One can spend the entire day listening to broadcasts of classical and operatic performances from all over the world. I'm finishing this while listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. Yesterday, it was Muti conducting the Bruckner Eighth with the Vienna Philharmonic live from Salzburg. So just keep enjoying great music in whatever format you like. Also remember, no format that I know compares to sitting in a great hall listening to a great orchestra. It is the ultimate in sound.
Great debate. Dave is an excellent critic but the final answers are in our own ears. My best friend in classical music has a very extensive system that emphasizes clarity. I find it to be harsh on my ears. He wants the very best sonic experience while I turn often to older performances that I find interpretively more moving even at the trade off of sonics. I had about 2500 LP’s and about the same number of CD’s. I do like the convenience of CD’s, especially not having to turn over the disc to hear the full piece. Here is a thought problem: “Which do you enjoy more - your Apple Watch or your Patek Philippe? Or even your vintage Omega?” Thanks for initiating this discussion.
And honestly, I am all in on vinyl and CDs and files, and I enjoy it all. But you gotta give it to him that the process of cleaning vinyl is a frigging pain... I use a Degritter, I am an absolute convert on proper cleaning, but it IS a bit of a required PITA.
Digital and vinyl can both sound amazing. Even as a CD collector, I can believe vinyl has the edge because it mostly hasn’t gone through the digitisation process. Many in the Hifi industry believe that to be true. As you say, good tape recordings are hard to beat too. But even vinyl mastered from very high res digital will still have a sound of its own in comparison to CDs.
Thanks for another great video, Michael. I watch both yours and David’s videos and enjoy them both. Whilst not always agreeing with Dave’s opinions, it’s great to see and hear someone ‘poking the bear’ and picking him up on his views regarding vinyl and cd! Being a vinyl addict myself, I couldn’t have put your points better myself… 🙂
Thank you for this informative and enlightening video! I own both CDs and Vinyl Records (way more vinyl) and I think they both have thier place. I think when it comes to albums that were originally mastered digitally, vinyl doesn't have much of an advantage. But I'm 100% convinced that a vinyl recorded from an analog master, through an all-analog chain, cannot be beat.
My 2c. Dig vs vinyl is a recurrent topic at our local audio club. What's left out is the sound quality of both being a function of the playback hardware. I prefer vinyl because I can get the desired quality level with analog at a lower price point. BUT when I want the newer classical stuff, I'm mostly limited to digital. Since I've chosen analog as my preferred source and do not have unlimited $ for this hobby, my digital hardware, while being at roughly the same price point as my analog would likely cost a good chunk more to get to the sound quality (as subjectively defined by moi) of my analog. DH has my respect and affection even though he hates Furtwangler. MJ provides a more tech centric voice while still providing information on the music itself (although AQWO combo at $22K with the accelerated depreciation inherent in digital hardware is exhibit A in the $ needed for digital hardware high end quality).
Well said. I'm an owner & user of ALL these formats discussed and enjoy the features & benefits of each depending on my needs each day. See my earlier comment(s). A few points I've shared several times over the years re: various formats not regularly mentioned.... I love & enjoy visuals of various subject-matters. An artist's effort & choices in their album artwork & their jacket design is often as enjoyable to me or certainly appreciated each time. So vinyl cover art is very entertaining like a book might be. Related(!), I LOVE playing different genres & albums via ROON and go down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia on an album ir artist or genre, etc. Fun, fun, fun as well.
@@DanielHog13 I'm with you on Roon- it's made computer based media way more fun. I've done w/o a CDP for the past 2 years as I've burned all our CD to hard drive (a pandemic project) via Nucleus and love the integration with, in my case, Qobuz.
While I respect Michael Johnson as a reviewer, this post simply shows again a vinyl-phile arrogance like Michael Fremer, failing to appreciate what a quality digital setup can provide. I think this post is more confirmation bias.
@@intothevoid9831it’s the age old myth that digital is somehow fundamentally flawed because it uses a finite number of samples. Some people claim it will take an infinite number of samples to capture the audio precisely. Human hearing doesn’t go beyond 20kHz, so don’t need to capture sound beyond that. 44.1kHz sampling can easily capture over 20kHz audio. Want to capture more? Sample at 96kHz to capture sounds only bats can hear.
The 1st article, titled ‘the resurgence of vinyl LPs’, that i encountered was in 2002. Since then similar-titled articles appeared every 3-4 years. CDs were for a long time double to triple the price of LPs. As a teenager in the 80’s vinyl (and original cassette tapes) were an easy choice.
It's all about the music!! Personally, I love listening to recordings the way they were mixed and mastered. For me, it's also about legacy. New releases on CD, older ones on vinyl. I usually listen to film music... it's great to grab an early 60s well preserved Tiomkin or Rózsa's LP with their liner notes and artwork.
I appreciate your views and opinions and I also appreciate Dave’s. Everyone has likes and dislikes and that’s fine. I worked at a record pressing plant in Nashville back in the late 1970’s. I picked up masters on Music Row and then watched as they were put on the press and the blob of vinyl dropped and the label was pressed and then boom, you had an LP.
You've earned my subscription with this video. I'll tell you more: I don't even care whether it sounds better or not (even though it does). Just watching it spinning with the tonearm hovering on it and the music coming out is more rewarding than any digital media with as much computing power you can come up with. In that regard even cassettes beat CDs. And if properly recorded and played with good equipment they don't sound nearly as bad as people think they do.
I’ve watched him before and I’m no expert but he seems to know several recordings of same piece and which ones he likes best! With that being said I also agree that you tubers should explain what system they have. I’ve always enjoyed your videos except the Japanese albums(but to each his own). Recently went to a record fair in Asheville,N.C. So glad to know to avoid Angel records and which ones to consider purchasing. Thanks so much for all you’ve shared on your videos !
I loved your video on this "hot" topic and have since subscribed because of it. As an almost life long audiophile of 56 years (my age) I have listened to pretty much every format with the exception of 78's. The areas of CD/SACD/Pure Audio Blu-ray superiority that I think many would agree that were not touched on were dynamic range, noise floor, storage capacity and ability of the SACD/Pure Audio Blu-ray (and DVD Audio) to carry high rez lossless audio. CD Redbook playback are obviously compressed so they would not be part of the high rez discussion . I would love to hear your thoughts on these playback mediums and their associated pros/cons vs vinyl.
Wonderful video, Michael. Of course, when someone says, “warm” sounding, people generally understand what that means, especially musicians. If “warm” were to be measured, I’d think it’d be a bit of an emphasis in the low mids, but there is something more to it than just that. Vinyl records do not inherently have pops and clicks, and I wince a when I hear that said. As you mentioned, it’s from mishandling the record. After I clean a record and put it in a nice inner sleeve, it’s generally fine for quite some time. Vinyl can seem somewhat inconvenient to some, but the sound quality, the thrill of the hunt, the ritualistic aspect, etc., etc. make it worth it, imo. I’ve also absolutely A/B’d different formats of the same recording as well. No need to be scared of the word audiophile. Caring how something sounds is not a negative thing. I think people may try to avoid the word audiophile, because to some, there’s a connotation that you’re listening to how your gear sounds rather than it being a tool to enjoy the music.
Vinyl records have a typical dynamic range of around 70 dB, depending on the equipment used to record the audio and cut the record. CDs have a typical dynamic range of 90 to 93 dB, though 16-bit digital audio has a theoretical dynamic range of 96 dB. Uncompressed high-res audio files with 24-bit resolution have a theoretical dynamic range of 144 dB, though modern ADCs and DACs max out at around 120 dB or so.
Thanks for making this video. I was frustrated watching Dave's video. I don't fully disagree with him on everything, but I think he's being facetious a lot. You put my thoughts into words pretty darn well.
My experience has been no matter how well I have taken care of a vinyl record over the years, snap, crackle and pop still rears its ugly head. Sometimes it does on the first play. I've owned vinyl, cassettes, cd, sacd, dvd-a and blu-ray audio formats during my lifetime. I had stopped listening to vinyl many years and decided I'd give it a try over the last few years. I bought a few dozen new LPs to go along with my older vinyl collection. I like the improved quality of the newer vinyl. I can't stand the "new" prices. You literally can by a new record on cd for half the price and sometimes you even get a few extra songs that don't fit on the single vinyl. I now find myself gravitating back to cd. I'll keep my vinyl and I'll keep listening to it, but between the price difference and the additional maintenance required to keep your vinyl in good working condition, I'm returning to cd as my medium of choice for new purchases.
I'll comment on just one aspect of this. What we call clicks & pops are the result of three things: 1. Scratches/scuffs 2. Dust/dirt/debris 3. Static electricity Only No. 1 could plausibly be put down to "mishandling". The vast majority of clicks & pops are due to Nos. 2 & 3. Unless you live inside a vacuum chamber on a planet without a magnetosphere, this will always be the case. This is the reason for the insane industry of cleaning & destaticing products, & I indulge in it myself. I have fluids & cleaners & ultrasonics & ionizers & antistatic sleeves & spend the time in the ritual of (1) cleaning my records, old or brand new, & (2) keeping them free from static. The truth is that you can mitigate clicks & pops from dirt & static, but you cannot eliminate them. Even if you clean them perfectly, as soon as you expose the surface to the environment, you're going to get dust on them again & will need to, at a minimum, brush the dust off. This has an inevitable sonic consequence. This is an inherent characteristic of vinyl as a medium that will always be an issue. This is one area where the superiority of CDs & digital formats is inescapable. Perhaps it doesn't bother you or other listeners so much. I'm guessing that by owning a Zerostat, it bothers you at least somewhat. Given the huge dynamic range of classical music, the unavoidable clicks & pops that are inherent in vinyl count, for me, as a massive mark against the format. There are many things to love about vinyl, but this is a forever problem with it. It can't just be hand-waved away as "mishandling."
Two points from an old guy who grew up listening to records. I believe you made his point about the hassle of playing records. What I got from your comments on that is, unless you are extremely fastidious, your records will not sound their best. A listener needs to pay attention to the process at all times or the records will develop unwanted noise, or "wear out." In my youth, I wore out many records through neglect. The second point is some folks who have done A/B comparisons have determined they prefer the sound from CDs. I bought my first CD back in 87, but didn't start comparing until the early 90s. For years the records won these tests. It wasn't until I bought a high end CD player sometime around 2005 that I finally would say I preferred what I heard from CDs. Of course that doesn't mean CDs are superior, It just means I prefer their sound. It's all moot now as I mostly stream an don't really care what sounds better. I rarely listen to music I'm familiar with, so have nothing to compare it to, and feel it's a waste of time to compare anyway. Cheers.
Thank you for your knowledgeable response to daves video. I hope he sees your response and mabey hell have a better experience one day if he opens his mind to it.
After Spotify I minimized my LP and CDs to being packed away. Clean livingroom. After the lack of ownership and boring livingroom I now have vinyl and stream spotify. CDs are in storage for now. I have vinyl just due to fascination how that little diamond picks up the signal. And the vinyl just gets better and I love the owner relationship I get. Record players are so cool. Just love it. Dont care if it may not the best sounding or that the scratches may be there on some.
Vinyl is a collectable music product. Scale, materiality, vintage. CDs are an evolution from a sound perspective that removes the gap between mastering and cutting a vinyl with grooves and warm distortion, and a cd's mirror replication of the master you hear made in the studio. The argument now is less about sound, (you choose) and more about ownership of the recorded music artefact. The vinyl LP has collectable allure, the cd has utility and function. Fact is you don't need either to enjoy music now, but I still like the material connection of ownership. It says 'I honestly love this Art.'
Very well said, Michael. Retired scientist here ... I remember a professor once said how easy it is to design and experiment that gets a null result (e.g., A sounds as good as B). All you have to do, he said, is design a sloppy experiment. So if anyone makes a blanket claim that CDs always sound just as good as LPs, it could be that they're listening through poor equipment (or through a computer's sound card). So many other factors are more important in determining what you hear than the medium on which it's recorded. I have thousands of LPs and quite a few of the originals have been sold and replaced by a better sounding remaster/reissue. That reissue could be on LP (as for example the DG Original Source LPs) or it could be on CD (for example the box set of Michelangeli's recordings on DG). Many of those original DG pressings were far from warm, and today's DG engineers are atoning for the sins of the bright LPs pressed in the 70s.
Who is stopping you from listening to vinyl? Now it's not enough to listen to vinyl but you must dutifully prove it's superiority to the "deplorables" who somehow enjoy CDs..
If one is a serious collector, as you both are, there's still no way around physical media. I notice this every time I visit fellow audiophiles (I'm both, a classical music lover and an audiophile) who use steaming services that a great part of what Dave Hurwitz talks about in his videos, and maybe the greater part of my favorite recordings, are not available on streaming services, and if they are, not in the best sounding editions and/or remastering. Besides, on very high-end systems it turns out streaming doesn't sound as good as playback from storage media or an SACD transport, in short, if one is, as Hurwitz puts it, "into the game of comparisons", then there's no way around physical media, and since the overlap is nowhere near 100%, there's probably no way around using both, and unless one's inherited an extremely well-assorted LP collection, there's certainly no way around digital playback. Real (especially classical) music aficionados aren't the kind of people who'll limit themselves (and that includes the realization that one won't listen exclusively to audiophile recordings).
Hi i LOVE both Vinyl and CD and And i love all kinds of Music Mainly Prog Rock ...i Bought Vinyl in the Seventies and Eighties...and was GLAD when cds came out at the time CDS were harsh ---But No Longer Modern CDS are SUPERB when Played on a Good System i Have a MOON CD Player and REGA Turntable and i LOVE BOTH ...I Love Vinyl but you can still get Clicks and Surface noise and Wear ...However i still love Both i ENJOYED your Video ...all the best from SCOTLAND
ABSOLUTELY. I remembered back in the late 90s/early 00s newly released cds, and especially double cds would be priced at 30+ bucks! Or more... i vividly remember that.
You did a great analysis of Dave , well balanced view , some people will complain about an ice cream cone! We all work with them ! I watch all your videos , keep them coming!
I'm 59. Have about 25,000 records, 25,000 cds. Been continuously collecting the former since 1976 and cds since 1986. Love them both. To this day I usually buy the cd and the vinyl of each release. Granted most people are not in a position to have collections of that size but I am grateful that it has worked out for me. My cds generally sound terrific. My records generally sound terrific. As between the two, for any given release of a mastering, the record usually beats the cd for presence and dynamics, and is more fun to play. But if I want to play music in the background, the cd is more convenient. No question a high end vinyl setup is more expensive than a high end cd setup. No question used and new cds are so much less expensive than used and new records. That having been said, most of Dave's other objections to vinyl are overstated or just wrong. But I want to stress the cost disparity is a significant issue. If I was starting out today, I'd probably just buy cds. Terrific sound (much much better than streaming) for much less expense than vinyl. Then again my two 20 something sons have both become record collectors, to the detriment of their finances :)
So in (say) 45 years of buying/collecting you will have bought over 500 of each every year, and presumably played them at least once each.... when newly acquired (not likely I would suggest). One must uncritically assume you have a private source of income and never actually worked 40 of the hours available each week, and sleep 7+ hrs I have digitally transferred my LPs, and retain maybe one fifth of your volume and have calculated I cannot live long enough to hear them once each before I die. Since there are some I'd like to hear more than once I have reluctantly decided to abandon the collection mania.
I love comparing vinyl to CD and hear the different things each do. But with all things being equal. Vinyl gets you better tonal color and fleshes out the instruments better. I listen to pre 1990 recordings mostly. The way they recorded things before were just plain better. I love tone. And todays recordings and even remasters of old recordings just dont have the tonal color of instuments.
A few things. First, Michael, I am seriously impressed by your patience and generosity, especially compared (sigh) to many commenters here. Second, not only do I agree with you wholeheartedly, that recordings are illusions and, generally speaking, they are illusions of a performance to be recreated in one's listening environment, but that the "performance" the record producer has in mind is largely dependent on their monitoring equipment and the "sound" that represents their brand, so to speak. This is why RCA Living Stereo sounds characteristically different from Mercury Living Presence or Decca (to a degree) regardless of the environment the recording took place in. In fact, this is the intention. Moreover, not only is it irrelevant, it is also impossible to know how the electrical output of the recording session translates to the human ear, so imagining that you can compare the recording session to the resulting CD or LP is futile. Third, there's an inherent problem comparing playback media not addressed here: simply put, they are not comparable. No matter how good your record playback set-up, your CD player, or your DAC, comparing the output of one to the other is something like comparing how fast a dog can run 50 meters to that of a horse, or a human. Kind of depends on the particular dog, horse and human doesn't it. So, if you compare a record played on your best record player to a CD on your best CD player, what exactly are you comparing? Certainly not the media! There are just too many variables in play. Yet that what we tell ourselves when doing the A/B. Finally, when Dave asserts that there is "no such thing as a superior sound carrier medium in every instance" I think he is referring only to the commercial playback choices under discussion -- in which case, the can be no argument there -- since analogue magnetic tape is still the gold standard as a recording medium, and by a considerable amount. I could be wrong, but I believe the medium is not the limiting factor in the digital domain.
I have some vinyl records that I've had for years. I been mostly a CD buyer. I still have many cassette tapes. It works for me. Whatever floats your boat. Do what brings you joy. Whatever format you use. It's all music.
Vinyl: Technology so advanced that it needs RIAA equalization. Cost $10 in the 80s; $40 today. Used vinyl can cost double that. Decent turntables start at $1k. CDs: Cost $15 in the 80s; $10 today. Used CDs can be purchased for $3. Decent CD players start at $39.
On the one hand, LPs need RIAA EQ, while the CD format does have error correction built into its standard. A decent phono costs around $400 and a good CD player about the same. I do agree about the disc prices.
I commented on his video. I said that I've recently got back into vinyl and enjoy the hobby. I didn't say vinyl sounded better than cd's, just different in a way I like. He replied with a snarky remark. I replied back and asked him why he felt he needed to mock me. He didn't respond.
I wouldn't take it personal. Mr Hurwitz has surprised me many times with his brusque responses to comments. I like to think that there is no bad intent behind it. Enjoy your LP collection to the fullest, I'd say.
For me, CD is preferable when it comes to classical music. There are some rock albums I prefer on vinyl (e.g. an Artisan pressing of Exile on Main St) but overall digital is much more convenient. A well known mastering engineer said that vinyl is closer to the master tape with regard to detail, but that he preferred a well mastered CD. I am inclined to agree. I want my music to sound great everywhere: at home, in the car, on my portable drive, using headphones or played out loud.
I think one of the biggest issues here is back in the day - everyone was a vinyl collector - because that is all there was - and once more "convenient" options came along - they got adopted - the masses will always go for convenience - Apple perfected the way people can put 1000 songs onto a block in your pocket - and people one upped that with having ALL THE MUSIC - streaming ALL THE TIME - so - older people like Dave - who had to go through the changes and maybe even when he had vinyl - didnt like it - will never grow to like it. Younger generations have CHOICE - and also lots of other better options in pressings/hifi equipment/and just overall knowledge from people poetryonplastic - I find it funny when (usually older folks) say - "I HATE Vinyl - all the crackles and POPS" - and Im like - yeah - I HATE BAD/DIRTY Vinyl too! Most people have never heard REALLY good vinyl records or actual CLEAN vinyl - because they had dad's crappy stereo and his junk vinyl.
I like David. I subscribe to his channel and I support his online business. David has forgotten more about classical music than I’ll ever remember. But watching his video was painful… and I’m grateful Michael that you took the time to properly dissect it. Six years ago I owned fifty records. Today I own over one thousand. Vinyl to streaming is about 80/20. When I want to listen to my favourite music, fatigue free, there’s no comparison. I wondered why, back in the noughts, I stopped listening to my CD collection. Now with a quality turntable and phono stage, in 2024 I know why.
When I recently added a phono preamp rather using phono input in my receiver (which is high end) - whoa, did vinyl playback sounded marvelous with enhanced soundstage.
@@1998mchp Most engineers put out terrible recordings and listen to crappy all-in-one active speakers all day. They aren't this unassailable authority like you think they are.
cannot wear out unless you had a poor stylus or heavy weight ..in fact even if you have a moderate setup you can hear a big difference in the sound once correctly aligned
Just a dynamite video! In the hobby world I've come to appreciate how complex things can get once you get past the surface of just about any pursuit. There are people who could speak for hours about so many seemingly simple things: sneakers, fountain pens, cinematography, watches ... etc. They might have spent years exploring the subject and thereby gained a profound understanding of it. To those who are less knowledgeable about something it's easy to dismiss the passion of someone who is. Some of the comments here make me cringe.
@blueapples You must be reading a few of my comments over the years, LOL, where I've often used my collection of pens, watches, sports memorabilia, etc as a basis for a point or discussion. Kudos.
I have all mediums. LPs, CDs, Tape and I stream. I enjoy them all and still collect Vinyl, CDs and tapes. Each has their own characteristics. Love music first!
Well said!
@kevirose Exactly! I have some vinyl that blows away the CD version and vice versa.
Tape (reel to reel) or cassette?
@@preservedmoose Nope, never reel to reel. Cassette’s were awful!
@@zizendorf I use metal cassettes and they are superb.
Great video. The Young guy defending vinyl and the old guy pushing CD’s is a fascinating debate on multiple levels.
C'mon, CD is a 40 years old technology, from today's perspective it is almost as ancient as vinyl. It is also a physical medium anyway. People who remember the CD introduction are old today.
@@voytecco6104 I worked in a record store at precisely the time when CDs came in and vinyl was sold off cheap. The 'industry' pushed CDs so hard, retailers thought vinyl was dying out like the dinosaurs and it almost did go away completely, before the revival.
@@mattwalsh751 young guy with a bias towards vinyl you mean.
Reason and reasoning and analyzing makes peopel always to enjoy things less.
Asa Spiritualô peopel who do mediation, sports travels and enjoy life
say the more you analyze some content or hobby the less you enjoy it at the moment...
because enjoyment doesnt come muchfrom head or brain but from body,
"thoughts are in mind, feelings are in body"
And scientists of neurosciencea nd spirituality and end epigenetics say
Heart has its own brain, and wisdom, and electromagnetic field, but its not based pon yanalyzis and loc or resaon etc.
Maybe Davids reasomn was that while he ois listening and enjoying music....he doesnt want to be in aanalytical state of analyzing it.
Because enjoying isnt coming from brain,
music is energy, enjoyment is energy, its not logical or analytical thing.
How many times does this have to be said? There are recordings on vinyl that are not on CD and never will be. There are recordings on CD that are not on vinyl and never will be. The smart ones in the pack know and make room for both.
yeah but deep in your heart you always have a preference... if the price is the same I always prefer vinyl, they just sound better to me. I end up buying lots of CDs because vinyl prices are crazy.
@@net_news Lol the price is never the same! and If it is a that record is going to be a dusty gouged up piece of plastic.
@@monaural2.988 this is not the subject here.
Yes! Sick of the "either/or" mentality.
@@scottgates601 i know, thing is, if you leave the price out of the equation it's easier to know which is your favorite format. Price being equal I prefer vinyl. In the real world I buy a lot of CDs bc vinyl is too expensive. Did you get the idea?
Sound engineer here. A couple things about one aspect of the discussion. You are very much correct in your general argument about audio being an "illusion" in that a performance captured with a microphone is not an accurate representation of what we would hear standing in that room. That said, vinyl (and any other analog format for that matter) IS very much imparting a sound. What we call warmth (which very much is a widely accepted term) is unquestionably a form of DISTORTION. Now, most of us love it, but Dave is very much correct in that if you were present in the control room at the recording studio were the artists/producers were making decisions, or even at the mastering studio, you wouldn't be hearing the distortion that vinyl is imparting. And in that regard, digital audio is a much more ACCURATE representation of any signal that it's captured, what the artists/engineers were hearing in the control room. This is not an opinion, this is a verifiable scientific fact that digital audio recordings are more accurate than analog ones.
Now the important thing when it comes to music is that 99 times out of 100 when you compare a digital audio release to a vinyl release, you are comparing different MASTERS. Even if the lathe is being cut with the digital master (as is often the case these days), the cutting engineer is tweaking the signal to optimize it for that format. Naturally, that would exacerbate the differences between one and the other, and it's fine to prefer one over the other. But it's important to understand the science behind what each format is.
Good points. I work in audio too.
The real issue is the dynamics destruction of CD / digital post 1993. It's left Loudness Wars remasters of practically all major rock/pop in the streaming systems.
Part of the vinyl revival fetish -apart from pink noise - groove rubbing 'warmth' - is the dynamic range still being baked in via the formats limitations.
Pre 1993 CDs will be the digital Rosetta Stones of popular music.
@@1998mchp
I agree! What the recording industry has done to the CD as a digital sound carrier is pure crime. But that only speaks of the flexibility and possibilities of this medium, which far surpasses vinyl. The industry would do the same to vinyl if that medium could handle it dynamically. What saved vinyl was its limitation and narrow dynamic range.
@@ljuboizsiska5448 majority of music released on CD wasn't compressed to its limits, this is only a minor portion of it, mostly pop rock destined for US radio. I listen to mostly jazz, world, prog and acoustic music and honestly can't say I have a single CD that is a victim of the loudness wars.
@@emilspec1227 I agree with you, but that maybe 10-15% of Cd is responsible for 100% of the criticism towards that medium.
@@ljuboizsiska5448 sure but the criticism is very clearly unjustified and used by the analogue brigade to degrade the format.
Glad you acknowledged how badass Dave is though. Learned so much about classical from you both, and there are solid arguments on both sides of this debate.
Dave has every right to his life experiences either CD’s and. vinyl! Record resellers in my area, Tacoma/Seattle won’t buy or sell classical music except to put it in a dollar clearance bin! Dave has been a lonely voice on You Tube discussing classical music with joy on his face and in his voice! Thanks to both of you for bringing some light to classical music!
A few years back I bought some classical LPs and operas from a Seattle record shop. The guy tried to pass off like, three entire boxes of classical to me for free because they just don't sell. I might have taken him up if I hadn't walked to the store. I love classical LPs and it's fun to get like, five records for the price of one "good" condition rock record but it's a hobby thing, I'd never pretend it sounds better than CD. (honestly half the reason I buy LP operas is that it has a giant libretto included, sometimes I just get it for that and put it on cd/streaming, especially if it's one of those opera sets with the annoying autochanger sides)
A needle going trough a groove not wearing it down is physically impossible! Where is friction there is wear.
off course there is but with 1.8 grams at least with 50 to 60 years none has worn out , needles ,yes, maybe 12 since 71, had only two by this time but know i own 28 turntables of high quality , i colect hi-fi components
It's not an issue with a moving coil cartridge.
@@michaelrovner4165 why not?the sound is better but lower and is still friction like any other stylus, as the record isn´t played by the MC cartridge but for the stylus in it
I don't disagree, but I don't know how relevant it is. How many times would you have to play a record before there was *actual, noticeable* degradation in the sound? I bet it would be many thousands - probably more than is realistically possible, unless you listen to the same record multiple times a day for a long time. And how exactly would you measure the degradation, especially if it's something that happens very gradually over time?
@@alekhidell3644 The first playing degrades it.
I just received a Japanese CD of some Vinyl I had. Its fidelity and dynamics completely blows away its vinyl counterpart in sound quality. Its all a matter of speakers and amplification with CDs that supposedly sound worse than vinyl. Classical music is a revelation on CD because of it full range and lack of unwanted noise caused by a friction based reproduction method.
Hurwitz may have a point in that the labels try to sell us the same music we’ve already bought multiple times.
I have a big vinyl collection ( 4000 , jazz, classical, blues, rock ) and a very big CD collection and I prefer CDs for many reasons, quality, price, format... ( with all respect to the LP collector ... )
Ok. I've listened to 3 minutes and a history lesson is called for. First, he compares the high price tag of today's vinyl to cds, and how cds were "so" expensive when they came out. He wasn't alive in the 1980's, so he's basing his comments on what he has read. Cds were about twice the cost of vinyl when they came out. I remember paying around $15. While cds went up in cost to around $20 in the following 10 years, their prices have come back down to their original release prices. Vinyl is selling for between 5 to 15 times their original release price. What must be factored in is the lack of original recording costs of repressed records. So while it's true there are costs related to remastering, it does not compare to original recording costs. Btw, I used the Feds. Inflation calculator and determined that the $3.50 price I paid for an album in 1975 would cost $21.31 in today's money. Not $40. And not $60 to $125 charged by Acoustic Productions for their premiere re-releases. That being said I am a fan and collector of those releases, and purchase both the vinyl and SACD versions.
I am reprinting the comment I made after I watched the Dave Hurwitz video. Young folk (those under 65 - I am 79) often do not consider mobility issues that can present themselves as they age. As one grows older, it gets much easier to play CDs. I still love vinyl, and the care I took with my collection minimized pops, clicks, and annoying scratches. Sometimes, when I play vinyl, one would think it's digitized because of the lack of surface noise. Anyway, here is the edited comment I left for Dave and am now leaving for you: 'Mobility matters, too. I may not be up-to-date on what is out there, but CDs play longer than vinyl without needing to turn or change an LP. Or, gasp, have one vinyl drop on top of another. There are multi-disc CD changers that give listeners hours of music without needing to reload. Like Dave, I prefer to own physical product. With the amount of music DH discusses, I am often inspired to listen to the music of the day if it's in my library or buy it on CD if it's not. CD convenience enables me to listen longer and ensure that I do not have too many opportunities to fall.
Yes, and, cds do not degrade with every listen, like vinyl. Those pops and clicks from the first play on were annoying and distracted from the enjoyment of the music.
Just get a streamer and Tidal subscription.
There is ALWAYS surface noise, because there is friction.
Either you're looking great for your age, or you're too young to remember than even before CDs took over, many Classical music fans were already switching from vinyl records to cassette tapes, because it freed them from getting up to flip records in the middle of a long piece, and from the surface noise and inner groove distortion of vinyl. The introduction of metal tape and Dolby C NR in 1980 allowed cassettes to approach the quality of reel-to-reel and to make audibly indistinguishable copies of mint-condition LPs and live radio broadcasts, and by 1981, digitally-mastered pre-recorded cassettes of classical works were already becoming common, just in time for the Walkman to revolutionize music listening -- Beethoven was no longer chained to the living room!
My first vinyl purchase was the justly famous Reiner Scheherazade on RCA Living Stereo when it was initially released (in 1960) so you know how old I am! I love vinyl especially for the opportunity it gave for great album cover art and inserts that were large enough to be readable. But the ritual necessary to keep them clean and the constant hunt for vinyl that wasn't warped (even when new) was a continual horror show. Digital formats make storage simpler (and nonexistent if you stream) and now the resolution is good enough to equal or exceed the analog versions, and the warmth that was missing in the earliest digital recordings has been largely restored. So I agree with Dave.
Rca Living Stereo sounds great on streaming too. Recording engineers are paramount.
We have a mint vinyl collection. In the early 1980's we started to buy CD's and our vinyl collection sat abandoned on our shelves for 40 years. A few weeks ago I told my wife we should sell our vinyl collection and she said "NO". We dug out our Rega turntable and started to listen to our LP's again. Tears flowed from our eyes. The sound struck deep emotional chords - the music was so natural and so beautiful. We have since listened exclusively to our vinyl records. And we are now buying vinyl records again, starting with the Deutsche Grammophon "Original Source" releases. Vinyl is not convenient. But we are willing to pay the price.
I regularly don’t agree with Dave’s reviews but on this topic of vinyl vs CD I have to agree with him. I have several thousand classical LPs and been collecting for 40+ years. I regularly listen to the LPs, mainly because of what’s on them that hasn’t been transferred to any other medium. I love the LPs, don’t get me wrong, but (1) the surface noise / clicks are omnipresent and super annoying in quiet passages. I have professional level equipment (Thorens) and the LPs are cleaned before every playing. It doesn’t take mishandling (as you call it) to get them, it’s omnipresent dust for one. (2) the quality of sound is highly variable from one LP to the next, there is considerable fluctuation due to the quality of the pressing. You don’t know what you get until you place it on the record player. CDs don’t have this problem, or the variability is much much less. (3) the price of modern LPs is insane. Using an inflation argument to say that they cost the same as back ‘in the days’ is silly. The Bruckner set you showed is 300 Euros on LP and 40 on CD (with lossless Blu-ray Disc included). I’m sorry, but the factor of almost 10 difference isn’t worth it. Not to mention convenience of format etc.
You need amateur equipment so you don't hear all the extrinsic noise :)
1. I had the same issue with surface noise. But I found out it was due to bad set up and entry level turntable, phono stage and specifically the cartridge. Once I understood my set up I was able to get my record playing experience to sound lovely, quiet and dynamic. No surface noise and no pops and clicks. 2. Yea i can agree that not all pressing plants are equal. But for the most part most new records are overall good. 3. You don’t have to buy vinyl. That’s the great thing about this hobby-you can love 💿 CD, vinyl records or streaming. You can have Bluetooth or stream. It’s beautiful.
Well, I have heard CDs that sound great and some that sound like crap. There is some variation in quality.
I agree with you and even in this thread that is under your opinion one says you need better equipment so you won't hear the noise. It's almost a religion in that if you take notice of the religion's deficiencies it's because you aren't believing hard enough.
@@keithwiebe1787 I hear you. My system is entry-mid level. But I did begin with a $200 table, a $120 phono stage and $100 cartridge. The surface noise level was audible to the point where I was like dang. The pops and clicks made me say dang Vinyl sucks when I played dirty records. Even today I have to be careful with my set up. If I don’t use well shielded cartridge and or rca cables I can hear AM radio coming through my speakers. But again, I don’t think we need to spend mega church money to hear these improvements but spending more will allow you to hear the difference.
I'm 58 years old, which means I've passed the vinyl and CD era. I remember when I heard the first CD in my life; Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms. I was amazed by the ease of handling and the clarity of the sound, devoid of any artifacts and noise. At that time, as a kid, I had quite a vinyl collection, but I continued to buy vinyl only in cases where I couldn't find the album I was looking for on CD. Today, I have a high-end system whose value is in the neighborhood of 250,000 Euros and is completely based on a digital sound source. I don't have a single vinyl today. However, I have several thousand CDs and I still obsessively buy CDs wherever I can get hold of them, usually in bulk. I feel that I need to have a physical copy of the music I like because I think the foundations of music streaming are very shaky, especially in this geopolitical situation. I have no problem imagining a situation in which I wake up in the morning and my Tidal service does not work together with the entire Internet. I'm thinking of giving an analog source of music a chance, but it won't be vinyl, but reel-to-reel tape. If I already want an analog source, then let it be the best analog source. In that case, I would look for analog recorded music on tape and digitally recorded music on CD. I know it's not easy and it's expensive, but that's the hobby. As for the vinyl itself... I'd rather have acute attacks of hemorrhoids every 5 days than deal with vinyl again. CD quality reproduction has advanced tremendously and today's top DACs sound incredible. A lot of people, especially young people, embraced vinyl because it was the first time they heard music that wasn't MP3 and didn't come through cheap headphones.
If you want to shut yourself off to some amazing sounding music on vinyl, it's up to you, I guess, but really, as a "music lover" you seem to be very closed down
A disturbing thing about streaming - I noticed on a few occasions using headphones some microsecond playback distortion.
250,000 for digital is hilarious.
I'm also 58 and remember when everyone had to have a copy of albums like Bridge Over Troubled Water then CDs of Love over Gold, Brothers in Arms etc. Sometimes I wondered if people actually played them. I no longer have CDs nor Vinyl - just Spotify premium from a Sony phone to the highest form of Bose 360 blutooth speaker.
@@frankgarcia9834 I don't want the focus of this discussion to turn to the price of the equipment. Today, systems can be put together for fractions of that price that sound quite alright. The higher you climb with the price, the smaller the return, i.e. the smaller the improvement in sound quality. I have reached my limit. Everyone has their priorities in life. I like a lot of things, among other things, let's say cars. I could buy a nice little ultra racer for that money, but priorities. I enjoy listening to music much more than driving a car. I've seen all-digital systems that cost double and triple the price. I've seen a DAC that costs $120,000. But that's for the big guys who don't even know how much they paid for it.
The CD version (Blu Ray) of the Bruckner symphonies costs 45 Euro, the Vinyl version 375 Euro...
vinyl is $500 in USA @Music Direct
@@bachtozappa cool…the good thing about capitalism is that you don’t have to buy a record if you can’t afford it. Also you have the option of not buying it if you want it.
@@Staybrown11that's not about buying, that's about the fact that vynils ARE expensive, and I say that loving Vynils... but they often costs from 3x up to 10x of the same music on CD.
@@BlackMoonGaming agree. Some specialized vinyl are more expensive than CD. But why focus on that small amount of small runs of limited edition vinyl. There are $80 cd’s on eBay. There’s $150 cd on record stores. The focus on limited edition is just misleading. Most vinyl records cost about the same as a new CD. And yes $50 for a vinyl is a lot of money but that’s not most.
@@Staybrown11 but that's not only for limited editions. most of the albums for most of the music generes are more expensive as Vynil.. at least twice as much... maybe I'm just unluky, but this is my experience. And I'm saying this loving Vynils a lot more than CDs..
Glad you're posting on youtube again! I enjoy Dave's reviews. I had to hurry off to the thrift shop with my Norrington CDs after learning how bad they are. I drank deep of the vinyl chalice when I ABd a 1980s DG Leitner Kempff Beethoven PC3 CD with tuttis that didn't sound quite right, with the earlier LP which remained detailed and transparent in climaxes.
Spot on and thank you for responding as it saves me the effort. Clicks and pops are a dated issue with vinyl. Current quality products are virtually noise free and will stay that way with rather simple and proper care. A good vacuum record cleaner will take care of most issues with older vinyl. Of course, scratches are forever but they are not the result of exercising proper care. The DG Bruckner set is outstanding.
At an absurd price.
@@ArtyFactual_IntelligenceI bought mine directly from DG at a much better price. Classical music will never sell like pop singers and somebody has to pay for the mixing and mastering. And there are 17 disks.
Am just watching your vid on our TV & sifting through comments simultaneously on my device, as I regularly do.
Someone correct me but for the YT subject matter of (Vinyl, Classical, CD music) I am BLOWN AWAY by the number of comments already after just 1 day (420+ as of Sunday 5pm CST)!!! That's a huge response in a short time frame.
Re: your vid (I'm 15mins in so far), I LOVE your format of responding by segment or section relative to his takes. Kudos.
I watch both his CH and yours of course.
I own 3,000 LPs and 700 CDs and am a big ROON user throughout home & office for 6 yrs or so. Love all tgese formats and each have their time & place for 🎶 enjoyment .
I admire you for your patience dealing with THAT person who incites pandaemonium in one clip and then feigns innocence as to why on earth ppl start attacking him. Love you channel btw. Just bought the new vinyl Bruckner/ Giulini. Highly recommended.
This video repeats the tired old myth that digital audio somehow inferior because of sampling, that the reproduced analog output will be 'smoother' with increased sampling rates. DACs can produce perfectly smooth analog waves up to half the the sampling frequency. So, CDs can easily reproduce up to 20kHz, which is the upper limit of human hearing in young people. And, 16bit allows for 96dB of dynamic range, which is much more any consumer analog format does.
th-cam.com/video/UqiBJbREUgU/w-d-xo.html
Rip your vinyl to digital using a high qualtity ADC. Play back that digital file and it will be indistinguishable from vinyl.
The fault in digital reproduction does not lie in the principle of Nyquist sampling, which is provably correct. The problem is that DACs need to do a lot of on-the-fly computation to overcome flawed implementation (e.g. problems of filters). So digital to analog conversion is very complicated, and doing it well costs a lot more than most people are willing to spend. DACs are still improving, over 40 years since the CD was introduced. But if you give me $5,000 with which to buy either a turntable and preamp, or a CD transport and DAC, I probably will get better sound by spending it on the turntable and phono preamp.
@@TheOriginalDrastic I've heard very high end digital and analog setups. While high end analog sounds really good, I don't find anything special over digital. So, I prefer digital for great sound quality, convenience and low cost of music.
@@bikeman7982 I agree. If I were tasked with spending $50,000 on either an analog or digital front end, that would be a hard choice. My own setup has both, and often I prefer the sound of a digital source. Both turntables and CD players have evolved, improved, and seem to be converging to the point that it's arguably a matter of taste.
I think that chart which represents digital audio as a sort of bar graph has done more damage to the understanding of how digital audio works than anything else in history. You can't imagine the number of people who think that digital audio is like, playing back a square wave, as opposed to using a DAC to reproduce the analog signal.
I think all your points are spot on, and so are Dave's! Let him rant a little! I don't think he's taking himself too seriously here. His channel is amazing, I have learned a lot about classical from him.
The big problem is that every inherent problem LPs have is exacerbated with classical music. Surface noise is especially bad in music with important quiet sections. Inner groove distortion is especially bad in a genre which tends to have loud, spectacular endings. Dynamic range compression is a problem in a genre with an enormous amount of dynamic range.
I love classical LPs. I love listening to LPs, and it's a wonderfully cheap way to get into the hobby (if you've seen the prices of old pop/rock records, you know what I mean). But there is a reason classical listeners were the first to mcoe to CD.
Dragging a rock through a spiral groove on a rotating piece of plastic is so 1899 technology - that was the year that Emile Berliner debuted his flat disc.
At one time, in the mid-80s, I had something like three or four thousand LPs, mostly classical, but lots of jazz and pop, too. (I was a reviewer and got lots of freebies.) But when the CD came along, I was taken with its lucid sound quality and ease of use. I was frankly tired of all the fussing and putzing around with LPs and the equipment and work required to produce the best sound quality. I don't begrudge anyone their love of LPs and the rituals related to them. I don't even doubt that the analog sound they produce at their best may have a magic that CDs can't equal. But I've lived happily with CDs for 35 years now and I'm too damned old to even think about going back.
The new equipment and needles are making the vinyls sound less noisy, even the old one's. You need vinyl to be considered serious as a DJ by the new generation. There is still moviment and marketing around vinyl because of it's exclusivity inside the club scene. So better cheaper pre-amps and mixers, you'd be amazed if you come back solely to listen to very loud music and not finding any surface noise
@@danielaragao I'm glad there've been such improvements. But back in my LP days it got very tiresome at times.
All of us have our love music in common! Let's celebrate that! Life is too short to argue, listen to whatever music format makes you happy.
I like the term “convincing “ vs. “warmer”. Really good video. Thanks for posting.
Also, I agree with the comment about the Keith Jarrett concert. I recently bought an original pressing of this that visually looked to be near mint. There were so many pops and crackles on this that I could not enjoy the music and will never play it again.
I’m in the first clump. I never totally gave it up and still have pretty much every LP I ever bought, starting in 1972, when I was in 6th grade. But I also have a pretty extensive CD collection. More recently (roughly 20 years ago), I started collecting used open reels.
I lived through that era, and at the time, DMM was a godsend for many labels. For instance, in the early 80s, it was still more difficult to purchase EMI pressings than Angel in the U.S. But once Angel came out with DMM, it made a huge difference. The records were more quiet and they had more transparency. Even on the used market, I’m willing to pick up an Angel, IF it is DMM.
Records are way too expensive. Regardless of the reason, they're ridiculously expensive. And this is coming from someone who happily buys $150 One Steps.
i love every format auf music ,every has his benefit
For me, I'm format agnostic. The master comes first. I *really* enjoy listening to records, though sometimes must admit the pressing or transfer just isn't up to par. With vinyl, that sucks because of the often high outlay. Though yes, sometimes that happens with CD and streaming too, though the outlay is easier to eat.
You're going to have a whole bunch of people wanting to come over and listen to Bruckner with you.
I have several Bruckner Symphonies none of which are on vinyl, CD, 8-track, or streaming. I now buy my music from nativeDSD. These are DSD downloads of DSD64 and DSD256. Direct Stream Digital (DSD) uses a very high sampling rate to capture audio. The standard DSD format has a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz, which is 64 times the CD audio sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. DSD256, has a sampling rate of 11.2 MHz. Bruckner sounds fantastic!
From my experience working in record stores in their heyday, a lot of people did Not change their stylus often enough causing wearing. I had inspected records brought in by customers saying they weren't sounding like they did before. These records were generally spotless but yes, did sound worn. The question I posed to them was, how often do you play records and when was the last time you replaced your stylus. In some cases they hadn't been changed for years because they thought a diamond stylus should last forever. Secondly, people had generic record players back then, where the balance and skating were factory set, because high end players were generally out of most people's financial reach. Also the technology of the time was not what it is today. As a result records did tend to wear.
CDs on the other hand are not indestructible as originally advertised. They can scratch and skip, their surface CAN deteriorate over time losing part or all of the data on the cd.
I agree with the old man. IF you listen to classical.... then SACD. with a SACD player/system that processes actual DSD, will be your best friend. Its literally better in every stat over vinyl. The rest is coloration and system specific. If you have thousands into a basic cleaning system, which is what basic vacuums and ionic cleaners actually cost, and you have thousands into cartridges, isolation, phono stages, tube amps, etc... I bet your analog system sounds wonderful. If your vinyl has a single digital process, then what is the point??? Most vinyl records "now a days" are digital. WHY not just go HiRes SACD/DSD, it's the closest source. Even streaming is getting good. I use Amazon Prime, most of the albums I listen to are 24/192. I UNDESRTAND I have some AAA albums from the popular retailers who care about vinyl, Acoustic Sounds, etc. They sound great...when they are engineered and mastered correctly. ( UHQR, for 150 bucks) It's really not worth the cash difference to a 35-dollar SACD/DSD source.
Check your SACDs, CDs, DSDs out on an audio editor. 'Audacity' is free. Look at the clipping, the compression and the 'louding' that you are listening to on most of them.
@@cjay2this thread is about classical music, that’s a no issue.
As a working musician who listens more frequently to live music than to recordings, I’ve come to notice the bias (or in a more positive light, the ‘point of view’) of modern classical music production/engineering. Some of my listening favorites are older recordings of what Dave might call ‘unlistenable recording quality), partially because I don’t mind filling-in the missing timbres, articulations, etc. through audiation, but also because I sometimes find these live and older recordings to be less ‘fussy’ and more straightforward in their audible bias (for example favoring the downstage instruments dramatically, or in the case of pre-electric recordings, significantly disadvantaging the upper frequency-range).
On the other side, I’ve had so many young and new listeners come to me after their first live performance complaining that they ‘couldn’t hear the soloist at all’ or something suggesting that the balance and clarity of a live orchestral performance struck them as totally unfamiliar having only heard recordings. I think in some sense good engineering and production are spoiling us!
The problem with the video is, of course, that David Hurwitz has been unable to comment on your various remarks - and I think we both know that he would have a lot to say in response to your comments. I gave up vinyl decades ago because local New Zealand pressings at the time were dreadful - and I've never considered returning to it. I think the first CDs were poor but they have improved enormously over the decades. I personally love SACD and direct stream digital (DSD) in general.
Bad "Loudness War" Mastering has given CD's and digital audio a bad name which this format/medium does not deserve !
I personally startet buying vinyl records back in 2003 because many so called "re-mastered" cd's I owened were totally over compressed, de-noised to dead and just sounded bad compared to old vinyl records from the 70's which had the original mastering on them.
So: STOP THE DAMN LOUDNESS WAR !!
My 2 cents..
LPs used compression and bass reduction.
I was there when CDs first came out. My brother purchased the first Sony CDP-101 CD player shortly after its release in the early 80s. I got my first CD player, a Realistic CD-1000 in 1984. There was an issue with the mastering of some early CDs due to companies using LP masters to create CD masters. Once this issue was resolved, the sonic advantages of CDs, their greater dynamic range, lack of surface noise, zero wow and flutter, etc meant I no longer longed for the "warmth" of vinyl. I then started replacing all my LPs with CDs and the only LPs I still own were never released on CD. I still have all those CDs I purchased in the mid 80s and 40 years later they still play without issue.
Dear Mr, thank you so much for your analysis👍🏻Most of the times I don't agree with Mr.Hurwitz but it seems he thinks he's the only person who is right🤔I always listen with my ears and with my heart👍🏻
For classical music I think a lot if people prefer the wider dynamic range of cds. Near 100 vs 60 dB
i regularly listen to you. and Dave. I think you both will agree more with each other than disagree on this vinyl / CD issue. I feel Dave is actually indirectly ranting about the die hard fans of either medium who have become entrenched and close minded. In reality, what really matters (to me) is the mastering or remastering, rather than the medium.
I loved vinyl back in the 70s, but I am not nostalgic enough to get up and turn the record over, put records back in the sleeve, take out of the sleeve. Streaming is just so convenient. Yes, i miss the large format, liner notes, lyrics, graphics, but not enough to get back into it.
Very interesting video Michael. I think that in the end you both agree on the fundamental point: it is a case by case basis and how can it not be when there are so many variables entering the value stream, from the recording venue up to each listener’s audio equipment. I own a lot of vinyl and a lot of CDs/SACDs, so I don’t have a preference but in the end it is the performance that matters (I am talking classical music here). Not closing the door to CDs, again in the classical music genre, does allow one to access pretty much everything that was done in that genre since the mid-80s or so when classical music record companies abadonned vinyl. A lot of smaller independent labels (BIS, Chandos, Harmonia Mundi to name a few) have issued glorious records of classical music which are not available on vinyl. Should one shut oneself out from that music because « vinyl sounds better than CDs » ? I for one do not want to, but to each his own.
Living in Italy and far far away from my boxed-and-sealed vinyl records, I've had to collect hi-rez vinyl and CDs off of the internet, to restore my collection to what it was a long time ago. Dealing thusly in digital, I get to see every piece of music on my audio editor. I've found that since about 1995, most if not all CDs are either 'louded', actively compressed, or heavily compressed and clipping the zero point.
When I acquire a digital source, the first thing I do is put it up on my editor and check the waveform. At least half of all my acquisitions are compressed and worthless to me, and they get dumped. I've found that all of the vinyl hi-rez digital acquisitions have the normal vinyl waveforms and dynamics, and that's all I will settle for. The older 80s CDs maintained the original dynamics of the recordings, so they go into the collection.
More than half of the corporate hi-rez SACDs in print are compressed as well. Believe it or not. Sources from independent hi-end producers are perfectly fine in any medium (CD,SACD,vinyl), and they go into the collection, to enjoy.
My point is that CDs not made by independent companies are inevitably compressed, louded, and some are downright clipped. Go rip a CD and look at it on a free editor if you need to be convinced. I'm staying with my vinyls and older CDs. Digitize your vinyls well, do some restoration if you know how, and enjoy your music!
I love DH and I’ve got to admit earlier on in the week when I saw the thumbnail of his CD versus Vinyl video I couldn’t help worrying “Oh no was it me droning on about the affordability and merits of the original Decca release of War Requiem that sent Dave over the edge”. Totally in line with my personality I could not face watching his video nor this one yet. Anyway if it was me I’m ever so sorry everyone and pledge to rein in my droning about mono and the like in comments sections!
The basic problem people underestimate _vastly_ is the placebo effect. Most people think it's something nebulous that one has to strain to really hear. But the placebo effect doesn't work like this at all! It's MUCH more insidious in a way. First of all, the difference you "hear" is very obvious and leaving no doubt. In the late 1980s everybody and his mother heard the obvious difference between a regular CD and a gold-plated CD. And before that there was a clear difference heard between CDs and the same CDs whose edges were painted with a green marker. If you are old enough to remember the '80s, you'll recall the ads for those "special green markers" in the audiophile press. It was amazing. And yet, it's all 100% fictitious. Contradiction? No, it turns out that's how our brains work. Bottom line is that in double-blind (that's critical) tests over past 40 years nobody was able to hear any difference between signal X versus the same signal X sent through 10 (ten) pairs of A/D-D/A converters in a _row._ Likewise, nobody in such tests was ever able to tell a CD from SACD. I am very glad CDs are available, never liked the bother of the vinyl. And I go to live classical concerts a lot too.
Yes, placebo is very real and people do not want to admit that any such thing affects them.
@@Liisa3139 not only do they not want to admit to it, but they get very upset when the topic is mentioned.
Listening and hearing the difference between SACD and normal CD was a revelation to me, a very unwanted one at the time because I thought there could not actually be any difference and it was all a silly marketing ploy. The clarity and smoothness of the DSD (sacd) format was and is very apparent if you listen through good equipment. It needs to be actually recorded in DSD not just up-sampled from PCM. The difference in these two digital formats is actually what helped bring me closer to Vinyl because vinyl is another step towards clarity and smoothness. I agree placebo is real but true DSD is a the real deal. Try using the Pine player if you are on osx or foobar2000 on windows (both freeware). Take some time A/B with good headphones you will hear the difference.
Thanks for this. The stangest part of Dave's argumenet is the new and improved discussion. What didnlt they make cars at the turn of the centure like they are made today.? Why didnlt they maked televisions as good as today? Why didn't the Brits have good food back in the 50s and 60s as they do today 🙂
Mazzy, Im sure 40:30 might of hit close to home? 😉
@@pinkrudy ha. Had to go ew listen to that part. Sure, the music first but I love great sound too, so I have some audiophilia in my blood 🤠😎✌🏻
@@mazzysmusic I think you misunderstood that part of Dave's video.
I’m old enough to have grown up with records. When CD came out I couldn’t afford it but assumed it really was perfect sound forever. When I bought my first house and built my listening room it was at first all CD. Vinyl was almost nonexistent back then. Only after it was done I heard a Linn and it sounded so good I had to get a turntable. The next few years I was playing records and CD about equally. One night my wife said, “It’s so quiet!”
I thought she meant surface noise. No. She means the CD has more noise! Wtf!?!
My wife taught me something very valuable: with records the noise rides above and separate from the music. Like people coughing at a concert. With digital the noise is interwoven into the music. The music is the noise. CD turns music into noise. Records don’t do that.
@nicksterj Actually if you read it again more carefully and this time thinking it through more you will see the digital conversion itself is in fact the source of the noise.
@nicksterj What part of "interwoven into the music" do you not understand?
@nicksterj My wife would beg to differ. Women don't care about technical jargon. They only care how the music sounds. When they tell you your precious digital sounds like noise you should listen.
@nicksterj In case you haven't noticed it is easy to win any argument, simply make up your own definitions and facts and, wala! Bravo!
The problem with classical vinyl is with a dynamic range much greater other genres (in today’s equivalent mastered at say -24 LUFS rather than -14), noise is more distracting. I like piano recordings on vinyl - especially when the instruments were miked close to soundboard the medium helps mellow out the hardness - but the records really do have to be pristine. Likewise jazz just plain sounds better on vinyl. For orchestral recordings, violins can sound better but you practically lose the bottom octave of double basses which is produced more transparently on cd. Important to note that these Kingsway Hall, Concertgebouw etc recordings were done to tape, so reel to reel would be ideal way to listen to them, not vinyl. And even in the days of early digital you had great recordings, such as Haitink’s Bruckner 9 from 1981 or Giulini’s LAPO recordings. It all depends!
After viewing both videos and reading all the comments, I think there is a major point that has been ignored in the discussion. That of availability.
Since the mid 1980s (forty years ago!), the overwhelming majority of classical music releases, as well as every operatic and chamber music recording that I know of, were only released on CD. There was no option if one wanted to listen to the latest recording by older artists such as Gilels, Bernstein, Arrau or von Karajan or new artists such as Salonen, Mullova, Bartoli and Jarvi. It was either CD or nothing until the somewhat recent arrival of streaming. Some sounded really fine and some not so much. But being a music lover first, I thought it absolutely ridiculous to totally ignore two generations of artists that I admired previously or discovered on CD. Also, think of the amount of unfamiliar music that has been released during the same period on CD only - Complete Sibelius on BIS, the many Naxos issues of unknown and/or unrecorded composers, the HIP movement and Baroque Operas - all available on CD only. I should also mention the audio restoration of historical recordings done by Ward Marston, Mark Obert-Thorn and Andreas Meyer. Their work, found almost solely on CD, has been truly spectacular on labels like Marston Records, Music and Arts and Sony. Sony's and Warner's recent "Mega Boxes" releases afford music lovers to enjoy legendary (and sometimes unjustly neglected) artists at incredible prices. For example, one can purchase the 95 CD set the Complete EMI Columbia, HMV, Electrola and Parlophone Recordings of Otto Klemperer mastered by Art & Son Studio for the price of one original EMI Columbia stereo LP.
Before anyone thinks I'm just some CD fanatic, the majority of my collection is vinyl which started with a 45 of "Little" Steve Wonder's "Fingertips, Part One and Two" that I purchased in 1963 at the age of five and I'm waiting for the arrival of DG's Original Source LP von Karajan Bruckner Symphony set more than sixty years later! I've never found the process of cleaning LPs (both vacuum and ultrasonic) to be an inconvenience and take my turntable to my local audio dealer to be checked regularly for stylus wear and various adjustments. Some of the greatest recordings I own are on LP. And some are on CD. It is as simple as that!
One other point I believe should be addressed is that of the, at times contentious if not hostile, relationship regarding classical music and audiophile reviewers. I think I can speak on this subject being a reader of High Fidelity, Stereo Review (both deceased), Fanfare, Gramophone, as well as Absolute Sound (since Issue #1), Stereophile, and The Tracking Angle. I also watch classical music and audiophile videos found on TH-cam. In the vast majority of cases, the audiophile critic when reviewing a recording will only cite a handful of other audiophile recordings of the work disregarding the rest. For example, an audiophile critic reviewing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring will compare the usual highly regarded sonically recording (all analogue and LP versions only) - Solti/Decca, Bernstein/Columbia 6 eye and maybe, Markevitch/EMI and conclude with their choice of recording. A music critic, especially one who has been doing it for many years, will compare a dozen or more recordings concluding with the one he or she interpretively prefers. The head butting occurs when the music critic has the attitude of how can the audiophile critic recommendation be taken seriously when he/she hasn't heard a majority of the recordings of the work reviewed. Flip the coin over and you'll find the audiophile critic questioning the music critic opinions citing their substandard audio equipment or preference to digital. Both are somewhat ridiculous. When I bought my 1st LP of the Rite (Bernstein/Columbia) in the early 70s, there were around 15 to 20 recordings available. Now, there must be over 100 or more. There are simply to many recordings of the standard repertoire available. And if the music critic derives pleasure from their audio system and prefers digital to analogue, so be it. In the early 70s, I had a Panasonic system with a Garrard turntable and enjoyed every LP I played. And think of the arguments between the two groups themselves - ERC Records a few years ago, for example.
Sorry to ramble on so long but I'm hoping that a few of you will appreciate what this old-timer has to say. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be around when there is so much great classical music available in all formats, LPs, CDs, SACDs and streaming. One can spend the entire day listening to broadcasts of classical and operatic performances from all over the world. I'm finishing this while listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood. Yesterday, it was Muti conducting the Bruckner Eighth with the Vienna Philharmonic live from Salzburg. So just keep enjoying great music in whatever format you like. Also remember, no format that I know compares to sitting in a great hall listening to a great orchestra. It is the ultimate in sound.
Thank you for this, most illuminating.
I have a little bit of both. I listen to vinyl and CD, I also stream music. It’s all about what I’m in the mood for.
Great debate. Dave is an excellent critic but the final answers are in our own ears.
My best friend in classical music has a very extensive system that emphasizes clarity. I find it to be harsh on my ears. He wants the very best sonic experience while I turn often to older performances that I find interpretively more moving even at the trade off of sonics.
I had about 2500 LP’s and about the same number of CD’s. I do like the convenience of CD’s, especially not having to turn over the disc to hear the full piece.
Here is a thought problem: “Which do you enjoy more - your Apple Watch or your Patek Philippe? Or even your vintage Omega?”
Thanks for initiating this discussion.
And honestly, I am all in on vinyl and CDs and files, and I enjoy it all. But you gotta give it to him that the process of cleaning vinyl is a frigging pain... I use a Degritter, I am an absolute convert on proper cleaning, but it IS a bit of a required PITA.
Digital and vinyl can both sound amazing. Even as a CD collector, I can believe vinyl has the edge because it mostly hasn’t gone through the digitisation process. Many in the Hifi industry believe that to be true. As you say, good tape recordings are hard to beat too. But even vinyl mastered from very high res digital will still have a sound of its own in comparison to CDs.
Thanks for another great video, Michael. I watch both yours and David’s videos and enjoy them both. Whilst not always agreeing with Dave’s opinions, it’s great to see and hear someone ‘poking the bear’ and picking him up on his views regarding vinyl and cd! Being a vinyl addict myself, I couldn’t have put your points better myself… 🙂
Thank you for this informative and enlightening video! I own both CDs and Vinyl Records (way more vinyl) and I think they both have thier place. I think when it comes to albums that were originally mastered digitally, vinyl doesn't have much of an advantage. But I'm 100% convinced that a vinyl recorded from an analog master, through an all-analog chain, cannot be beat.
My 2c. Dig vs vinyl is a recurrent topic at our local audio club. What's left out is the sound quality of both being a function of the playback hardware. I prefer vinyl because I can get the desired quality level with analog at a lower price point. BUT when I want the newer classical stuff, I'm mostly limited to digital. Since I've chosen analog as my preferred source and do not have unlimited $ for this hobby, my digital hardware, while being at roughly the same price point as my analog would likely cost a good chunk more to get to the sound quality (as subjectively defined by moi) of my analog. DH has my respect and affection even though he hates Furtwangler. MJ provides a more tech centric voice while still providing information on the music itself (although AQWO combo at $22K with the accelerated depreciation inherent in digital hardware is exhibit A in the $ needed for digital hardware high end quality).
Well said. I'm an owner & user of ALL these formats discussed and enjoy the features & benefits of each depending on my needs each day. See my earlier comment(s).
A few points I've shared several times over the years re: various formats not regularly mentioned.... I love & enjoy visuals of various subject-matters. An artist's effort & choices in their album artwork & their jacket design is often as enjoyable to me or certainly appreciated each time. So vinyl cover art is very entertaining like a book might be.
Related(!), I LOVE playing different genres & albums via ROON and go down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia on an album ir artist or genre, etc. Fun, fun, fun as well.
@@DanielHog13 I'm with you on Roon- it's made computer based media way more fun. I've done w/o a CDP for the past 2 years as I've burned all our CD to hard drive (a pandemic project) via Nucleus and love the integration with, in my case, Qobuz.
@@smortega54 Once you go ROON, you don't go back!
Your misunderstanding of how digital audio works explains your position against it. This is a common theme among the "analoguephile" community.
th-cam.com/video/UqiBJbREUgU/w-d-xo.html
While I respect Michael Johnson as a reviewer, this post simply shows again a vinyl-phile arrogance like Michael Fremer, failing to appreciate what a quality digital setup can provide. I think this post is more confirmation bias.
This misunderstanding is what?
@@intothevoid9831it’s the age old myth that digital is somehow fundamentally flawed because it uses a finite number of samples. Some people claim it will take an infinite number of samples to capture the audio precisely. Human hearing doesn’t go beyond 20kHz, so don’t need to capture sound beyond that. 44.1kHz sampling can easily capture over 20kHz audio. Want to capture more? Sample at 96kHz to capture sounds only bats can hear.
Sadly, I just received brand new DG Original Source Series LPs - one was horribly warped, the other has scratches ! WTF !
... and that says it all. Vinyl is old technology, why the revival, nostalgia, that's all. Cds all day long.
The 1st article, titled ‘the resurgence of vinyl LPs’, that i encountered was in 2002. Since then similar-titled articles appeared every 3-4 years.
CDs were for a long time double to triple the price of LPs. As a teenager in the 80’s vinyl (and original cassette tapes) were an easy choice.
It's all about the music!! Personally, I love listening to recordings the way they were mixed and mastered. For me, it's also about legacy. New releases on CD, older ones on vinyl. I usually listen to film music... it's great to grab an early 60s well preserved Tiomkin or Rózsa's LP with their liner notes and artwork.
OK, I'll respond to your response to the OG video......
The circle of life continues…
I appreciate your views and opinions and I also appreciate Dave’s. Everyone has likes and dislikes and that’s fine. I worked at a record pressing plant in Nashville back in the late 1970’s. I picked up masters on Music Row and then watched as they were put on the press and the blob of vinyl dropped and the label was pressed and then boom, you had an LP.
You've earned my subscription with this video. I'll tell you more: I don't even care whether it sounds better or not (even though it does). Just watching it spinning with the tonearm hovering on it and the music coming out is more rewarding than any digital media with as much computing power you can come up with. In that regard even cassettes beat CDs. And if properly recorded and played with good equipment they don't sound nearly as bad as people think they do.
Some Classical cassettes sound astonishingly good - even on my very far from state of the art equipment.
Oh boy. I was hoping for this one. Hold on a minute while I grab my popcorn.
I’ve watched him before and I’m no expert but he seems to know several recordings of same piece and which ones he likes best!
With that being said I also agree that you tubers should explain what system they have.
I’ve always enjoyed your videos except the Japanese albums(but to each his own).
Recently went to a record fair in Asheville,N.C.
So glad to know to avoid Angel records and which ones to consider purchasing. Thanks so much for all you’ve shared on your videos !
Great critique. Very fair. Thank you for sharing with us.
I loved your video on this "hot" topic and have since subscribed because of it. As an almost life long audiophile of 56 years (my age) I have listened to pretty much every format with the exception of 78's. The areas of CD/SACD/Pure Audio Blu-ray superiority that I think many would agree that were not touched on were dynamic range, noise floor, storage capacity and ability of the SACD/Pure Audio Blu-ray (and DVD Audio) to carry high rez lossless audio. CD Redbook playback are obviously compressed so they would not be part of the high rez discussion . I would love to hear your thoughts on these playback mediums and their associated pros/cons vs vinyl.
Wonderful video, Michael. Of course, when someone says, “warm” sounding, people generally understand what that means, especially musicians. If “warm” were to be measured, I’d think it’d be a bit of an emphasis in the low mids, but there is something more to it than just that.
Vinyl records do not inherently have pops and clicks, and I wince a when I hear that said. As you mentioned, it’s from mishandling the record. After I clean a record and put it in a nice inner sleeve, it’s generally fine for quite some time.
Vinyl can seem somewhat inconvenient to some, but the sound quality, the thrill of the hunt, the ritualistic aspect, etc., etc. make it worth it, imo. I’ve also absolutely A/B’d different formats of the same recording as well. No need to be scared of the word audiophile. Caring how something sounds is not a negative thing. I think people may try to avoid the word audiophile, because to some, there’s a connotation that you’re listening to how your gear sounds rather than it being a tool to enjoy the music.
Vinyl records have a typical dynamic range of around 70 dB, depending on the equipment used to record the audio and cut the record. CDs have a typical dynamic range of 90 to 93 dB, though 16-bit digital audio has a theoretical dynamic range of 96 dB. Uncompressed high-res audio files with 24-bit resolution have a theoretical dynamic range of 144 dB, though modern ADCs and DACs max out at around 120 dB or so.
Thanks for making this video. I was frustrated watching Dave's video. I don't fully disagree with him on everything, but I think he's being facetious a lot. You put my thoughts into words pretty darn well.
My experience has been no matter how well I have taken care of a vinyl record over the years, snap, crackle and pop still rears its ugly head. Sometimes it does on the first play. I've owned vinyl, cassettes, cd, sacd, dvd-a and blu-ray audio formats during my lifetime. I had stopped listening to vinyl many years and decided I'd give it a try over the last few years. I bought a few dozen new LPs to go along with my older vinyl collection. I like the improved quality of the newer vinyl. I can't stand the "new" prices. You literally can by a new record on cd for half the price and sometimes you even get a few extra songs that don't fit on the single vinyl. I now find myself gravitating back to cd. I'll keep my vinyl and I'll keep listening to it, but between the price difference and the additional maintenance required to keep your vinyl in good working condition, I'm returning to cd as my medium of choice for new purchases.
I'll comment on just one aspect of this. What we call clicks & pops are the result of three things:
1. Scratches/scuffs
2. Dust/dirt/debris
3. Static electricity
Only No. 1 could plausibly be put down to "mishandling". The vast majority of clicks & pops are due to Nos. 2 & 3. Unless you live inside a vacuum chamber on a planet without a magnetosphere, this will always be the case. This is the reason for the insane industry of cleaning & destaticing products, & I indulge in it myself. I have fluids & cleaners & ultrasonics & ionizers & antistatic sleeves & spend the time in the ritual of (1) cleaning my records, old or brand new, & (2) keeping them free from static. The truth is that you can mitigate clicks & pops from dirt & static, but you cannot eliminate them. Even if you clean them perfectly, as soon as you expose the surface to the environment, you're going to get dust on them again & will need to, at a minimum, brush the dust off. This has an inevitable sonic consequence. This is an inherent characteristic of vinyl as a medium that will always be an issue.
This is one area where the superiority of CDs & digital formats is inescapable. Perhaps it doesn't bother you or other listeners so much. I'm guessing that by owning a Zerostat, it bothers you at least somewhat. Given the huge dynamic range of classical music, the unavoidable clicks & pops that are inherent in vinyl count, for me, as a massive mark against the format. There are many things to love about vinyl, but this is a forever problem with it. It can't just be hand-waved away as "mishandling."
Very well articulated, Mr Haynes. Hard to disagree with what you say.
Two points from an old guy who grew up listening to records. I believe you made his point about the hassle of playing records. What I got from your comments on that is, unless you are extremely fastidious, your records will not sound their best. A listener needs to pay attention to the process at all times or the records will develop unwanted noise, or "wear out." In my youth, I wore out many records through neglect.
The second point is some folks who have done A/B comparisons have determined they prefer the sound from CDs. I bought my first CD back in 87, but didn't start comparing until the early 90s. For years the records won these tests. It wasn't until I bought a high end CD player sometime around 2005 that I finally would say I preferred what I heard from CDs. Of course that doesn't mean CDs are superior, It just means I prefer their sound.
It's all moot now as I mostly stream an don't really care what sounds better. I rarely listen to music I'm familiar with, so have nothing to compare it to, and feel it's a waste of time to compare anyway.
Cheers.
thank you for this civil debate on classical music formats.
Thank you for your knowledgeable response to daves video. I hope he sees your response and mabey hell have a better experience one day if he opens his mind to it.
After Spotify I minimized my LP and CDs to being packed away. Clean livingroom. After the lack of ownership and boring livingroom I now have vinyl and stream spotify. CDs are in storage for now. I have vinyl just due to fascination how that little diamond picks up the signal. And the vinyl just gets better and I love the owner relationship I get. Record players are so cool. Just love it. Dont care if it may not the best sounding or that the scratches may be there on some.
Vinyl is a collectable music product. Scale, materiality, vintage. CDs are an evolution from a sound perspective that removes the gap between mastering and cutting a vinyl with grooves and warm distortion, and a cd's mirror replication of the master you hear made in the studio. The argument now is less about sound, (you choose) and more about ownership of the recorded music artefact. The vinyl LP has collectable allure, the cd has utility and function. Fact is you don't need either to enjoy music now, but I still like the material connection of ownership. It says 'I honestly love this Art.'
Very well said, Michael. Retired scientist here ... I remember a professor once said how easy it is to design and experiment that gets a null result (e.g., A sounds as good as B). All you have to do, he said, is design a sloppy experiment. So if anyone makes a blanket claim that CDs always sound just as good as LPs, it could be that they're listening through poor equipment (or through a computer's sound card). So many other factors are more important in determining what you hear than the medium on which it's recorded. I have thousands of LPs and quite a few of the originals have been sold and replaced by a better sounding remaster/reissue. That reissue could be on LP (as for example the DG Original Source LPs) or it could be on CD (for example the box set of Michelangeli's recordings on DG). Many of those original DG pressings were far from warm, and today's DG engineers are atoning for the sins of the bright LPs pressed in the 70s.
Your points are well taken, valid, and not hysterically presented.
I like Dave Hurwitz for his knowledge of music. However, he makes many generalizations regarding vinyl, and yes, your points are very valid.
Who is stopping you from listening to vinyl? Now it's not enough to listen to vinyl but you must dutifully prove it's superiority to the "deplorables" who somehow enjoy CDs..
If one is a serious collector, as you both are, there's still no way around physical media. I notice this every time I visit fellow audiophiles (I'm both, a classical music lover and an audiophile) who use steaming services that a great part of what Dave Hurwitz talks about in his videos, and maybe the greater part of my favorite recordings, are not available on streaming services, and if they are, not in the best sounding editions and/or remastering. Besides, on very high-end systems it turns out streaming doesn't sound as good as playback from storage media or an SACD transport, in short, if one is, as Hurwitz puts it, "into the game of comparisons", then there's no way around physical media, and since the overlap is nowhere near 100%, there's probably no way around using both, and unless one's inherited an extremely well-assorted LP collection, there's certainly no way around digital playback. Real (especially classical) music aficionados aren't the kind of people who'll limit themselves (and that includes the realization that one won't listen exclusively to audiophile recordings).
Hi i LOVE both Vinyl and CD and And i love all kinds of Music Mainly Prog Rock ...i Bought Vinyl in the Seventies and Eighties...and was GLAD when cds came out at the time CDS were harsh ---But No Longer Modern CDS are SUPERB when Played on a Good System i Have a MOON CD Player and REGA Turntable and i LOVE BOTH ...I Love Vinyl but you can still get Clicks and Surface noise and Wear ...However i still love Both i ENJOYED your Video ...all the best from SCOTLAND
Hmm . . . . . . as soon as I heard the word _'CLUMP'_ used, I knew where he was going 😞
ABSOLUTELY. I remembered back in the late 90s/early 00s newly released cds, and especially double cds would be priced at 30+ bucks! Or more... i vividly remember that.
Vinyl (same as tape) helps young people to feel exclusive and old people to feel young again, that's about it.
You did a great analysis of Dave , well balanced view , some people will complain about an ice cream cone! We all work with them ! I watch all your videos , keep them coming!
I'm 59. Have about 25,000 records, 25,000 cds. Been continuously collecting the former since 1976 and cds since 1986. Love them both. To this day I usually buy the cd and the vinyl of each release. Granted most people are not in a position to have collections of that size but I am grateful that it has worked out for me. My cds generally sound terrific. My records generally sound terrific. As between the two, for any given release of a mastering, the record usually beats the cd for presence and dynamics, and is more fun to play. But if I want to play music in the background, the cd is more convenient. No question a high end vinyl setup is more expensive than a high end cd setup. No question used and new cds are so much less expensive than used and new records. That having been said, most of Dave's other objections to vinyl are overstated or just wrong. But I want to stress the cost disparity is a significant issue. If I was starting out today, I'd probably just buy cds. Terrific sound (much much better than streaming) for much less expense than vinyl. Then again my two 20 something sons have both become record collectors, to the detriment of their finances :)
So in (say) 45 years of buying/collecting you will have bought over 500 of each every year, and presumably played them at least once each....
when newly acquired (not likely I would suggest).
One must uncritically assume you have a private source of income and never actually worked 40 of the hours available each week, and sleep 7+ hrs
I have digitally transferred my LPs, and retain maybe one fifth of your volume and have calculated I cannot live long enough to hear them once each before I die. Since there are some I'd like to hear more than once I have reluctantly decided to abandon the collection mania.
I love comparing vinyl to CD and hear the different things each do. But with all things being equal. Vinyl gets you better tonal color and fleshes out the instruments better. I listen to pre 1990 recordings mostly. The way they recorded things before were just plain better. I love tone. And todays recordings and even remasters of old recordings just dont have the tonal color of instuments.
A few things. First, Michael, I am seriously impressed by your patience and generosity, especially compared (sigh) to many commenters here. Second, not only do I agree with you wholeheartedly, that recordings are illusions and, generally speaking, they are illusions of a performance to be recreated in one's listening environment, but that the "performance" the record producer has in mind is largely dependent on their monitoring equipment and the "sound" that represents their brand, so to speak. This is why RCA Living Stereo sounds characteristically different from Mercury Living Presence or Decca (to a degree) regardless of the environment the recording took place in. In fact, this is the intention. Moreover, not only is it irrelevant, it is also impossible to know how the electrical output of the recording session translates to the human ear, so imagining that you can compare the recording session to the resulting CD or LP is futile. Third, there's an inherent problem comparing playback media not addressed here: simply put, they are not comparable. No matter how good your record playback set-up, your CD player, or your DAC, comparing the output of one to the other is something like comparing how fast a dog can run 50 meters to that of a horse, or a human. Kind of depends on the particular dog, horse and human doesn't it. So, if you compare a record played on your best record player to a CD on your best CD player, what exactly are you comparing? Certainly not the media! There are just too many variables in play. Yet that what we tell ourselves when doing the A/B. Finally, when Dave asserts that there is "no such thing as a superior sound carrier medium in every instance" I think he is referring only to the commercial playback choices under discussion -- in which case, the can be no argument there -- since analogue magnetic tape is still the gold standard as a recording medium, and by a considerable amount. I could be wrong, but I believe the medium is not the limiting factor in the digital domain.
I have some vinyl records that I've had for years. I been mostly a CD buyer. I still have many cassette tapes. It works for me. Whatever floats your boat. Do what brings you joy. Whatever format you use. It's all music.
Vinyl: Technology so advanced that it needs RIAA equalization. Cost $10 in the 80s; $40 today. Used vinyl can cost double that. Decent turntables start at $1k.
CDs: Cost $15 in the 80s; $10 today. Used CDs can be purchased for $3. Decent CD players start at $39.
On the one hand, LPs need RIAA EQ, while the CD format does have error correction built into its standard. A decent phono costs around $400 and a good CD player about the same. I do agree about the disc prices.
I commented on his video. I said that I've recently got back into vinyl and enjoy the hobby. I didn't say vinyl sounded better than cd's, just different in a way I like. He replied with a snarky remark. I replied back and asked him why he felt he needed to mock me. He didn't respond.
I wouldn't take it personal. Mr Hurwitz has surprised me many times with his brusque responses to comments. I like to think that there is no bad intent behind it. Enjoy your LP collection to the fullest, I'd say.
For me, CD is preferable when it comes to classical music. There are some rock albums I prefer on vinyl (e.g. an Artisan pressing of Exile on Main St) but overall digital is much more convenient. A well known mastering engineer said that vinyl is closer to the master tape with regard to detail, but that he preferred a well mastered CD. I am inclined to agree. I want my music to sound great everywhere: at home, in the car, on my portable drive, using headphones or played out loud.
I think one of the biggest issues here is back in the day - everyone was a vinyl collector - because that is all there was - and once more "convenient" options came along - they got adopted - the masses will always go for convenience - Apple perfected the way people can put 1000 songs onto a block in your pocket - and people one upped that with having ALL THE MUSIC - streaming ALL THE TIME - so - older people like Dave - who had to go through the changes and maybe even when he had vinyl - didnt like it - will never grow to like it. Younger generations have CHOICE - and also lots of other better options in pressings/hifi equipment/and just overall knowledge from people poetryonplastic - I find it funny when (usually older folks) say - "I HATE Vinyl - all the crackles and POPS" - and Im like - yeah - I HATE BAD/DIRTY Vinyl too! Most people have never heard REALLY good vinyl records or actual CLEAN vinyl - because they had dad's crappy stereo and his junk vinyl.
I like David. I subscribe to his channel and I support his online business. David has forgotten more about classical music than I’ll ever remember. But watching his video was painful… and I’m grateful Michael that you took the time to properly dissect it.
Six years ago I owned fifty records. Today I own over one thousand. Vinyl to streaming is about 80/20. When I want to listen to my favourite music, fatigue free, there’s no comparison. I wondered why, back in the noughts, I stopped listening to my CD collection. Now with a quality turntable and phono stage, in 2024 I know why.
When I recently added a phono preamp rather using phono input in my receiver (which is high end) - whoa, did vinyl playback sounded marvelous with enhanced soundstage.
Read the engineer comments. End of debate. Not retrospective justification for fools gold outlay.
You must have missed all the noise at soft passages.
@@1998mchp Most engineers put out terrible recordings and listen to crappy all-in-one active speakers all day. They aren't this unassailable authority like you think they are.
cannot wear out unless you had a poor stylus or heavy weight ..in fact even if you have a moderate setup you can hear a big difference in the sound once correctly aligned
Just a dynamite video! In the hobby world I've come to appreciate how complex things can get once you get past the surface of just about any pursuit. There are people who could speak for hours about so many seemingly simple things: sneakers, fountain pens, cinematography, watches ... etc. They might have spent years exploring the subject and thereby gained a profound understanding of it.
To those who are less knowledgeable about something it's easy to dismiss the passion of someone who is. Some of the comments here make me cringe.
@blueapples You must be reading a few of my comments over the years, LOL, where I've often used my collection of pens, watches, sports memorabilia, etc as a basis for a point or discussion. Kudos.