And speaking of old albums and players....

I have a bunch of vinyl, although my player's not connected at the moment. I really want to complete my Beatles collection, but the used British albums are pretty elusive over here in the states.

man, i'm searching for these too. they're a bit easier to find here though. just have to look at yard sales.

I'm a big fan of the old 7". Got several hundred of them, including the original Rolling Stones releases. :)

Firstly, I completely understand why you want originals. This needs no further explanation. My collection has only a couple of originals and is mostly re-releases from all subsequent decades and I have to say that I prefer the sound of the most recent ones. Maybe I've just had bad previous owners? I don't know...

You know, analogue sounds best on analogue and digital sounds best on digital. The mastering is often much better too.

Not really, it comes down to mastering, a well mastered CD will always have better sound quality than a well mastered record. The record just can't compete in terms of audio quality. The limitations on dynamic range and channel separation prevent that. Not to mention the issues of record degradation. And you'll never get a record that's able to do surround sound like you can do with 5.1 audio coming off a DVD.

It's interestingly anachronistic, but anybody that's listening to it for better quality is just fooling themselves. IIRC the folks over at hydrogenaudio already settled that argument.

you know, i'm not here to argue with you.

Um..

anybody listening to cd's for better quality is just fooling themselves or has a crappy record player.

Just my opinion.

Compression, anyone?

I just checked the cabinet. Matching Tie and Handkerchief has been pulled to the front so the husband was probably listening to that one recently.

I think the last record I put on is Wish You Were Here. Out of curiosity, the edition I have doesn't indicate track changes in the spiral: is anyone else's like that? Everyone else I know has an edition that visibly separates the tracks.

I don't have any vinyls myself, but my younger sister has begun collecting them.

Well mastered cd. Haven't seen any of those in a very long time. All I find are cd's loudened to hell with no dynamic range whatsoever. Recent Albums like American Idiot and Stadium Arcadium on vinyl blow their cd counterparts away.

Yep. For the proper effect, an expensive setup is needed for vinyl.

I wonder how much is subconscious? Kind of thinking of the difference between listening to an album from The Doors on vinyl versus CD. Maybe the clicking, popping, and other 'artifacts' from vinyl puts one in a frame of mind of listening to, say, "LA Woman" when it first came out, and that it then brings back the feelings of the era, especially for those around when those songs first hit the airwaves. Maybe those imperfections bring back memories from one's youth, and all of the reminiscences that come with it.

Of course, that assumes one is a near-term old fart like myself.

But it does make me think further: those clicks and pops obviously were not present in the studio during the recording session so they are absolutely artifacts of the recording, pressing, and playback processes. So does a 'clean' remastered version better capture the music, or does that editing take away the imperfections that represent the era in which the recordings were made? And how does that subconsciously affect one's opinion of the quality of the recording?

I suppose I could try some sort of informal test of my own ears - not a double-blind or anything like that, but simply knowingly playing both versions of a particular album and registering what it 'feels like' to hear each recording method. I'm thinking in particular of a good example that I can grab in both partial digital and full analog: my brother has the ELP triple-live album on vinyl and I have it on CD. Given the care that the band put into its recordings, this might not be a bad place to start. But then, it would still be the opinion of just one set of ears...

Ironically, the dynamic range of digital is never fully utilised (with the exception of concert music) as mastering has now become a job of reducing dynamic range as much as possible without distorting the sound in order to win the loudness war.

Vinyl produces a warmer sound through its own shortcomings - harmonic distortion. The same with vintage recording gear. Imperfections are what gives character. I do like this, but it has its place and I do not believe it superior to lossless codecs, or indeed, anything digital.

I wouldn't call it nostalgia, but I do like the process of taking these clumsy discs out of the sleeve and hearing the clicks and pops of dust and imperfection. All this ceremony encourages focus on the music because it isn't instantly accessable as it is with modern devices. I don't go to parties anymore, but I used to have brain hemorrhages of irritation as noone had the attention span to listen to an entire song before moving to the next. And the song wasn't even being listened to anyway...