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| Jean Shin's Sound Wave art exhibit |
There are so many factors that go into the final physical and sound quality of an LP or CD: recording, mastering, manufacturing, care and maintenance, and so forth.
Let's make the assumption for the sake of debate that all CDs and all vinyl records are recorded and mastered and manufactured and maintained equally, and see how they go toe to toe.
Vinyl is clunkier to store, weighs a ton in masses and takes up more space. This may not be a big deal if you only own like 10 records tops. If you are a hardcore sound connoisseur, chances are you would be owning hundreds. On top of that, if you were a DJ, moving all that vinyl from gig to gig is a healthy recipe for a hernia. For the same weight and space, you could store about 10 times the amount of CDs (or more). CDs win for portability and lightness hands down.
Packaging. Start with CDs. Jewel cases? What a joke of a name. As if they are really as precious as jewels. It's just shitty plastic. Digipaks? Cardboard. CD packaging, it is to be agreed, sucks as a whole. Yet look at vinyl. It's mostly cardboard and paper sleeves. Not much better! Though vinyl packaging is larger and so the artwork stands out a bit more. Looking at both mediums as a whole..if any packaging REALLY stands out from the pack, it is more of a question of an individual band taking the time to do something more artistically appreciable.
Capacity. One CD holds about 79 mins of music. An LP will hold no more than about an hour using BOTH sides, so like averaging about 1/2 hour a side. Talk about clunky. So many double albums with a side A, B, C, and D stretched over two vinyl records can be fit on ONE CD, period.
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| Amoeba Records |
Both vinyl and CDs can have problems with scratches, dust, and other environmental factors if not well looked after. Preserve and store both well, and CDs still come out on top.
As far as raw material decomposition, vinyl lasts longer. But here's the catch. It lasts longer only if NOT PLAYED. A pile of vinyl stored nicely on a shelf in a cool dark room could last ages and ages. Even in the landfill...almost immortal! Ha, sounds more environmental as well don't it, you dirty vinyl licking hippies.
Yet...what good is music if it's not PLAYED right?
Play a vinyl record 100 times over, and there's a very high chance all that needle digging and dust and heat and warping would have degraded the vinyl itself, and therefore the music itself. Vinyl is a physically interpreted medium. It can't be read without a literal needle DIGGING right into its precious flesh. The chances of well preserved vinyl are only good if you take impeccable storage measures and are a master audiophile with a well maintained turntable setup that costs way more than you'd ever like to admit (we're talking stupid, stupid prices here).
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| by Sorapoison |
Some vinyl diehards will say the sound frequency range of vinyl is roughly 22Hz-up to 30 kHz. It is hard to measure specifically, especially in the low end. The central idea behind vinyl having better sound is that this freq. range is more broad than CD range.
Ok. The human hearing frequency range is from 20 Hz – 20 kHz. Audio CD range is from 2 Hz-22,050 Hz. What this means is the CD range is 18 Hz lower than the lowest range of human hearing and 2,050 Hz above the highest range of human hearing. Sounds we cannot even hear are well covered by CD. We may not hear these sounds but feel them as vibrations (probably more in the low end with the volume CRANKED..and most of the vibrations one would feel would be within the normal hearing range even so.) Some music hardcores will say feeling these vibrations in our bodies would be all part of the grand listening experience. The bottom range of vinyl is slightly short of our full bass range of hearing. That's WORSE than CD! Or, it is beyond it.. like CD range. It's debatable. As far as the high end, the range is way higher than that of CD even. But we won't really notice these vibrations in a huge way at all, especially compared to the bass end ones. In fact, these could be just as well 100% nonexistent frequencies for all we would know and experience.
One camp will say it is a total myth that vinyl has better sound range than CDs, and that CDs have a better overall dynamic range. A lot of it is placebo effect. Ok, for the sake of argument let's say that it's true that vinyl DOES have a better range than CDs, it still doesn't discount the fact that any extra frequencies would be barely (if at ALL) noticed by ANYONE. The more noticeable frequencies picked up as vibrations would be closer to what's within the CD range, not some frequencies miles and miles out.
Also, the freq. response in vinyl degrades with the wear and tear with the record itself...the more it is played and not stored correctly or cared for. That right, it's not just a question of clicks and pops on well aged and used vinyl, the ENTIRE sound frequency response degrades!!
It's also probably more likely that limitations will show up if you convert vinyl, which is analogue, into digital formats (ie mp3s). With CDs ripped as lossless tracks, there seems to be no real quality loss present.
The converting from vinyl to digital is not always so simple, which is why all vinyl should come with free digital downloads of the tracks, but not all of it does. With CDs you can rip the tracks to virtually any type of digital file at any quality you choose in mere minutes.
Price wise, vinyl is a joke. Unless you are willing to get it used in a cheapies bin, which would mean good chance of wear and tear and worse sound.
Brand new vinyl typically costs FOUR times more than CDs, all items found from the best available price sources. It's a rich man's game. There was a time when vinyl and tapes were the norm, and CDs were just coming out. THAT was a time vinyl was way cheaper brand new, but unless you build a time machine, vinyl remains this niche collector's thing (making a real comeback) YET at a ridiculous price. CDs themselves are overpriced for what they are, so imagine how criminal it is that vinyl should cost even more!
Availability is another issue. To just get a bit of this and that, sure, whatever. Yet isn't vinyl supposed to be mainly for serious collectors? Serious collectors really go all out to get a zillion and one releases if they can help it. You'll only be able to get something like 20% of the albums you can get on CD. Some albums never even make it out as vinyl even once! Sure, there's always the flipside of the odd obscure record you can only find on vinyl that never made it to CD or is no longer on CD, but good luck hunting it down, and overall there are way more albums in CD form than vinyl, especially if you are talking about fairly modern music.
UPDATE: Was just reading another article that mentioned COLORED vinyl wears down faster than normal vinyl. So it's a cool visual collector's item but degrades quicker. ALSO the article stated that most new vinyl releases and re-issues are sourced from DIGITAL material, so all that analogue wonderfulness is basically lost from the get-go, and people are getting tricked into buying vinyl thinking it's so much better!!
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Outro/The Only Defense of Vinyl:
To be fair, vinyl has only one thing going for it that makes it 'better' than CDs. It can only be described as 'vinyl magic'. Vinyl magic is a certain fun factor, a warmth of sound, an experience. Because vinyl is analogue, the sound is perceived to be more 'warm'. This works pretty well for a lot of vintage classic rock albums, say. Because at the time... the stuff was recorded on shittier equipment, played on shittier equipment, and so forth. So a warmer sound is more complimentary and gives a more authentic feeling that you are transported back in time. Some crazy electronica album from last year? NO real proof that it'll sound better with that warm vinyl sound. It may actually sound worse. It's kinda like how if you watched old black and white movies on a shitty old TV set, it would have more charm to it instead of some super HD plasma flatscreen.
It's fun to listen to vinyl, to pull the record out, smell it, viscerally put it on. Play with the pitch shifting and speed (though that may wear the record down faster).
Dusty crusty clicks and pops? Maybe they too are part of vinyl magic, the experience and for some, nostalgia. Vinyl also tends to force one to actually sit back and relax and listen to a whole album in order, the way it was meant to be. Get up to flip to side B..that's the only interruption. Maybe well due. A drink and piss break. No shuffled playlists. No quick kills. An experience. More organic maybe? Let the ashes fall on the sleeve. Let smoke and sound waves fill the air. The artwork is more likely to be appreciated if it's larger. These kind of things, they are all part of vinyl magic. But if you are getting vinyl convinced it'll prolly never wear out, it has better overall sound than CDs, you don't like messes, you are lying to yourself about how cheap it is, and so forth (basically any reasons outside of true 'vinyl magic') then DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME! CDs are better!! Don't kid yourself! CDs beat Vinyl! Actually, in the end, I end up buying both depending on what seems to work best for a given moment!
*see also: http://fox-actors.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-i-still-buy-records-or.html
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| It's vinyl magic... |
