CDs are in every way better than vinyl records. They are smaller, much higher quality audio, lower noise floor and don’t wear out by being played. The fact that CD sales are behind vinyl is a sign that the world has gone mad. The fact you can rip and stream your own CD media is fantastic because generally remasters are not good and streaming services typically only have remastered versions, not originals. You have no control on streaming services about what version of an album you’re served or whether it’ll still be there tomorrow. Not an issue with physical media.
The vast majority of people listen to music using equipment that produces audio of poor quality, especially those that stream using ear buds. It makes me very sad when people don’t care that what they’re listening to could sound so much better, especially if played through a hifi from a CD player, or using half decent (not beats) headphones.
There’s plenty of good sounding and well produced music out there, but it’s typically played back through the equivalent of two cans and some string. I’m not sure people remember how good good music can sound when played back through good kit.
The fact that you somehow don’t know or pretend to not know the reasons people like vinyl makes this an easy downvote
People who listen to vinyl enjoy the sounds of distortion and static. It’s a much “warmer” sound, they claim. They are buffoons. Lossless audio files are the best way to ensure a quality, clean audio source.
How about using both? I have a vinyl collection AND a FLAC one I play on my iPod classic. I still like buying and playing vinyl.
Amen
CDs are better than vinyl in the same exact way reddit is better than lemmy: cheap, easier to manage, mainstream content. If you look for a sound that’s not strictly higher quality but that gives you a more authentic vibe, vinyl is the way
“Authentic vibe” is a coping mechanism to justify spending more for less.
Well maybe, I think it might be an acquired taste: all the little imperfections derived by the industrial technique in which a vinyl is made make it sound a little weirder but that’s the main reason you start to like it. Imperfection is something that might grow on you if yoh give it a chance
Did you just wake up from a coma that started in 1985?
CDs are better than vinyl for every reason that MP3s are better than CDs. That’s not news to anyone.
Vinyl is not “better” by any of the metrics you mentioned, but I prefer it because if I feel like buying a physical medium for the purpose of collecting music, I want my music to actually be physical. I don’t want a collection that boils down to 1s and 0s, I want one that more closely replicates the original source of the music.
That’s the reason I like vinyl, even if I do listen to digital music far far more.
Nope, mp3 is not “better” than CD since its a lossy format. It uses how we perceive audio so we notice it as little as possible, but you definitely loose details
You just can’t tell the difference with 320bps mp3. Less yes for sure.
So sometimes yes, sometimes no 🤷🏻
Study was done when most adilys had hearing damage. I can tell the difference between mp3 and flac using headphones under $10 no amp just straight from laptop 3.5mm
128 bits mp3 sure, 160 bits mp3 too, 256 bits mp3 on an okay setup why not, 320bits mp3 no way Jose.
Are you also hearing the difference with gold cables and all that audiofoolery stuff?
No actually i cannot tell the difference at all between 128kbps thru 320kbps but 320kbps sounds very different from flac lossless. Keep in mind the encoding used in the old days were very bad because it used to take more time to encode with old hardware so they used fast compression (kinda like how video encoding uses fast for encoding live streaming but it looks horrendous compared to slow encoding for non-live Youtube)
Modern high quality 128kbps encoding sounds the same as 320k
Now you’re just grabbing at straws. Back in the day you didn’t encode to 320bps because your usb-player held like 64MB.
Also no, todays 128bps does not sound lossless, 320bps do. Try it out to see for yourself! From a nice wav or flac ofc.
Absolutely! With half decent very affordable headphones and my middle aged hearing it is possible to tell MP3 from FLAC pretty accurately.
Which is why I buy from sources like BandCamp when possible, that offer lossless download options.
CDs more closely represent the original music than vinyl though and are physical media you can collect.
mp3s are objectively inferior on all fronts except file size
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There’s also funfactor in having physical media and limited choice. A phone with an entire collection on it is just. . plain. standard. even boring. And the handicapped phone UI ruins the rest of the smartphone experience if you wanna do other things with the phone other than listen to music.
Modern CD players also read newer formats, unlike the old-stock CD players off of ebay from 30+ years ago that only read raw CDA tracks
This is 100% correct, but I don’t think most people buy vinyls because of the audio quality. I own plenty of vinyls, but I know for a fact that my CDs and even higher bitrate FLACs stomp all over it for audio quality. Records are just kind of fun and nostalgic.
and make you feel like you are more authentic than people who don’t own vinyl.
all my record owning-friends love to go on about how they are the only folks who ‘really’ appreciate music…
Nah, that’s silly. I just think its a cool thing to collect and listen to. I still do most of my music listening on high end headphones while I work, but records are fun too.
They are probably just noobs experiencing the process of listening to an album as if that’s a novelty. Most kids these days just listen to streaming selections of various artists and probably mostly hits. Listening to an album seems old-school now, when it used to be the norm when CDs and tapes were the dominant music media format.
I’d say nostalgia is a big factor in what keeps technically inferior sound quality in the market
Repressing are the top sellers … yeah
If I’m going to listen to digital music, it may out may not come from a CD. Vinyl provides a different experience that digital provides. CD’s are just a way to distribute digital content.
CDs aren’t just mp3 files though. While they’re digital, the way the waveform is recorded onto the disc is very high quality and is going to be indistinguishable from the Vinyl unless the vinyl is dirty or degraded, in which case the CD sounds better.
If you play a recording of a vinyl and record it onto CD at the same time, then play that recording back, the 2 recordings will sound identical to anybody on the planet.
We are now getting to the medium or the message.
An experience from a CD can be replicated on various digital delivery devices. A vinyl won’t exactly.
It’s “The medium is the message.”
MP3 is lossy, WAV is not. And that “warmth” you get with vinyl is just because analog sounds fuzzy.
Have you not heard of FLAC? You can get files at higher bit rates and sampling frequencies than CDs. That being said I much prefer vinyl collecting. No it doesn’t always sound the best but I feel more in touch with the album. No ability to skip tracks, having to flip it over or change disks is more engaging than just pressing play.
You can still choose your tracks on vinyl, it’s just more manual.
Look at the grooves, and in-between them there’d be thin almost ungrooved flat lines going into the centre: those are the track separators. Hover the tonearm above those and drop it in to play the track you want.
I used to do this with some records I wouldn’t have a big care about with preservation (compilations such as Now That’s What I Call Music!), since it would mean those tracks would have more wear than the record as a whole.
Some of my 25+ year old cd’s appear to have started “rotting” inside and playback has been compromised / ruined in many cases.
Can I ask how they were stored? I’ve got 30+ year old CDs that run great. Only ones that I have issues with are those that are scratched.
Same here, I have many that are 30+ years old and haven’t found any that don’t work yet.
CDs are technically better for perfect reproduction. I still prefer vinyl for most pre-80s material because of the loudness war. Mastering of releases has warped the discussion entirely
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Well i gotta get the file from somewhere, and i wanna buy the physical CD for the art and liner notes
I listen to 128.kb mp3’s on my phone speaker.
I feel sorry for you.
Yes and you can get all your calories and nutrients from a processed paste, that’s much more dense than regular food so you don’t need to eat as much and can fit into a small tube so is much more convenient than regular food.
The fact people prefer normal food to Hugh density nutrition paste is proof the world has gone mad.
I don’t think that’s a good example.
The answer is simple: there is no “correct” way to enjoy art. Anyone saying vinyl is higher quality than digital is deluding themselves, but that doesn’t make vinyl a worse way to listen to music.
It’s more convenient to beat a video game on easy, and yet, many people find greater satisfaction in playing harder difficulties. It depends on how you would rather spend your time.
