@usbcable | ||
Which do you find better ? |
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
I find that CD is far superior to vinyl in most cases. The very high frequencies do not get reproduced as well on vinyl as they do on CD because the amplitude of the signal drops of gradually starting from about 16KHz. Where as a CD goes up to 20KHz before the high end drops of but steeply. This makes vinyl sound warm but lack detail where's CD sound sharp clear and detailed.
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
Vinyl can have physical problems such as a bad pressing or the vinyl can be warped or the grooves not concentric. Inner groove distortion can occur and surface noise is always present. CD can suffer defects such as the thin metallic silver layer not applied correctly with tiny holes in the metal making audible errors on the disc. Also aged CDs can have oxidised silver layer and renders the CD unplayable. |
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
Pops and clicks, static, dust and the potential for groove wall breakages can happen which is when you get stuck looping records. All can ruin the listening experience. Vinyl gets slowly worn out with each play. The sound is never as good as the previous play because of this. The turntable and cartridge have to be very high quality and accurately set up for tracking force and anti skate in order to minimize the wear on records. Vinyl has to be stored and handled extremely carefully without touching the grooves and it is recommended to get proper record sleeves as the paper ones scratch the discs. Records can warp over time often due to heat or not stored correctly.
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
CDs can get scratched and damaged if not handled correctly. One must only touch the edges of the disc. The CD will be unplayable if the top label side gets scratched but maybe still playable if a scratch is on the playing side. The error correction can correct up to 4000 bits of corrupted data on the disc so in most cases a scratch will be Inaudible. If you scratch a record often it will be unplayable with a clicking or jumping grooves.
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
The CD player is a complex digital system made up of many parts that must control the focus of the laser beam on the disc so it follows the track and reads the pits. Then complex electronics will extract the audio data from the disc and convert it to an analog signal. This comes at a cost and CD is complex in manufacture.
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@ementalm | 28 November 15 | |
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
The record player is a relatively simple analogue system on the other hand. The turntable rotates at a constant speed and the stylus tracks the groove and converts the undulations into analog signal. A decent turntable and cartridge can be had for a reasonable price. The stylus needs replacing about every 100 plays. So there's a cost factor there too.
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@usbcable | 28 November 15 | |
Record production is making something of a comeback these days and the CD is slowly being phased out in favour of downloads. Well there you go... CD vs Vinyl. What do you prefer ? |
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@garion | 28 November 15 | |
Vinyl, but because the record companies wanted people to buy into the expensive new format (cd) it became impossible to buy a vinyl record that wasn't warped, scratched, or both. I firmly believe this was deliberate policy on behalf of the recording industry. I had no choice but to abandon vinyl or to put up with wretched, glitchy, jumping albums, but cd is... 'soulless' it doesn't have the 'warmth' of vinyl. It is interesting to note that now illegal downloading has taken over, the record companies have started releasing premium quality vinyl recordings (at commensurately inflated prices).
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