CD's and Vinyl Outselling Digital Downloads for the First Time Since 2011

[kumquat]

Since you mention laser record players: http://elpj.com/ ^_^

They're a bit pricey, though.

The funny thing about that is they convert the vinyl waveform into a digital signal via the laser, at which point you effectively have a digital copy of the music anyway. There was never a need to press the vinyl in the first place.

Modern recordings are all done in digital anyway. You're pressing a digital recording into a vinyl. If you think vinyl sounds "better," then what you're literally saying is that the information loss when converting from digital tracks to vinyl improves the sound.

 

[Domingo]

Now, silly question time for anyone to answer: Do you think Blu-Ray Audio will ever take off? Or will it take aggressive pricing to make it happen?

I can't see it happening. We're rapidly moving away from all disks formats, and none of those premium sound formats have even made a tiny dent in the market when physical media was king.
Listeners aren't really overly concerned with quality for the most part, too. Most people are listening to music via cheap earbuds and their phone. It's not like people are gathered around the family TV/stereo to listen to the new Zeppelin record anymore. It's just too limiting in terms of logistics.

 

[emphy]

The funny thing about that is they convert the vinyl waveform into a digital signal via the laser, at which point you effectively have a digital copy of the music anyway. There was never a need to press the vinyl in the first place.

Modern recordings are all done in digital anyway. You're pressing a digital recording into a vinyl. If you think vinyl sounds "better," then what you're literally saying is that the information loss when converting from digital tracks to vinyl improves the sound.

I rather think this tech would be appropriate for old records - apparently you can tweak the settings so that you can direct the laser at non-worn out parts of the grooves.

The manufacturer claims that this device´s conversion from record to signal is fully analogue, with no conversion to digital at all. As far as I can tell from a quick glance at the patent, that seems to be the case.

 

[Deleted member 88301]

I went nuts in the 90's, buying lots of CDs. Well the 350 +/- CDs are in boxes. I'm not an audiophile, I just want music that sounds good. I use Spotify Premium, and the selection is great, and it sounds great through my Logitech Z323 2.1 speakers. Sure, if I had the money I'd have a better setup.

Going back to CDs or Vinyl seems like a real pain to me. I'm 132 years old, and I love my digital music.


Edit, really just 47. But I still want them kids off of my lawn.

 

[KamelRed]

The "No true Scotsman..." is strong in this thread.

 

[MrGuvernment]

compared to mp3, hell f'n yeah they got better sound quality especially cd's. if you got a good set of speakers the difference between mp3 and cd/vinyl is night and day.

Considering those people buying vinyl likely all use Apple earbuds and think iTunes is awesome...

I do agree, FLAC guy myself when possible, but fact is 99% of the population can not tell the difference between a streaming source and a raw source if you asked them to tell you the diff.

 

[nilepez]

For me it comes down to source and setup. If either is shit, it's going to sound like shit no matter what.

As for the numbers, I have to agree that streaming is taking over. I bounce between Spotify and Pandora. The last time I bought a CD was when a Youtube musician I liked dropped their first album through a small time independent label and I wanted to support them. That was back in like 2012 if I remember right. Now? I couldn't care less about having CD quality, unless it's an artist/group I really enjoy and want to support.

What I would have loved to see actually hold ground against the mp3 would have been either SACD or DVD-Audio.

Now, silly question time for anyone to answer: Do you think Blu-Ray Audio will ever take off? Or will it take aggressive pricing to make it happen?

I'm not against SACD/DVD-A, but everything I've read says there's virtually no audible difference between them and CD, because even golden ears can't hear much beyond 20khz and most on this forum can't hear 20khz (but maybe some of the younger forum members can), never mind that most speakers are also restricted to 20hz-20khz and that's certainly true for most affordable consumer speakers.

I will say the DVD-A disks in the Genesis Box Sets sound better, but that's mostly because, I suspect, they mixed it for 5.1 and converted to stereo/cd audio. As a result, the CD, IMO, suffer from bass distortion that's not in the 5.1 mixes (or any of the prior stereo releases).

That said, what's sad is that DVD-A could easily have been put into every car stereo with very little additional cost and while I don't think the sound would have improved one bit (even if I was convinced DVD-A was better, car stereos are pretty meh), it's sometimes nice to hear a 5.1 mix in the car. At this point, I think they should be putting BD drives in most cars.

 

[Nenu]

The funny thing about that is they convert the vinyl waveform into a digital signal via the laser, at which point you effectively have a digital copy of the music anyway. There was never a need to press the vinyl in the first place.

Modern recordings are all done in digital anyway. You're pressing a digital recording into a vinyl. If you think vinyl sounds "better," then what you're literally saying is that the information loss when converting from digital tracks to vinyl improves the sound.

They dont convert to digital.
Their mission statement in large letters at the top of the linked page says
"Uncompressed, Non-Digitized, Pure Analog Audio & No Physical Contact"
Because of No Contact, We are Presenting You New Analog Music with No Digitization

They describe how they achieve this as well.
How did you draw your conclusion?

 

[travbrad]

I just end up ripping to Flac and/or mp3 but I still buy some CDs. They are sometimes cheaper than downloads...and marginally better quality.

Vinyl tends to be better than either just because they do different mixing/mastering for those assuming vinyl audiophile hipsters have good speakers to listen through, but there's no reason they can't achieve that digitally as well. Even so a lot of lossless downloads are just CD rips.

 

[kumquat]

They dont convert to digital.
Their mission statement in large letters at the top of the linked page says
"Uncompressed, Non-Digitized, Pure Analog Audio & No Physical Contact"
Because of No Contact, We are Presenting You New Analog Music with No Digitization

They describe how they achieve this as well.
How did you draw your conclusion?

I just assumed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to see the circuit.

Regardless, the vinyl record itself is made through converting a digital file to analog in the first place. The tracks are recorded digitally from the very beginning. If you think vinyl is better than CD, then you're saying the act of turning the original digital file into a carving on a vinyl disk makes it sound better, regardless of how it's read later on for reproduction.

 

[Nenu]

I just assumed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to see the circuit.

Laser is not a digital format in itself.
Its far simpler to pass the analogue stream it produces when storage isnt the goal.
Using the same type of circuits as record players need to adjust the RIAA curve.

Regardless, the vinyl record itself is made through converting a digital file to analog in the first place. The tracks are recorded digitally from the very beginning. If you think vinyl is better than CD, then you're saying the act of turning the original digital file into a carving on a vinyl disk makes it sound better, regardless of how it's read later on for reproduction.

Why are you laying assumptions on me?
Also not all vinyl has digital masters so there is potential value there.

I still have a record deck but moved to a quality DAC some time ago.
My current is the Holo Audio Spring level 3 with an upgraded Singxer SU-1 to improve USB from PC.
Both record player and digital playback systems can sound fantastic but I find the latest DACs expose more detail/air, even with 44K material.
I also use HQPlayer, the result is quite incredible.

 

[kumquat]

I'm not "laying assumptions on" you. I'm speaking in generalities. If they apply to you (that is, you think vinyl just sounds better) then so be it.

 

[matt167]

New vinyl sucks and is pointless. Old vinyl is good, because it is a direct analog copy of the master. It is the cleanest copy of that music you could get. Not a copy of a 1990s hyper compressed re release.. I have a decent turntable but rarely use it because vinyl is so inconvenient. Couple years of dollar bin collecting and eBay deals. Ive ran out of room.

 

[krotch]

I never stopped buying CDs, cause for me, that's about the only way I can get music. I listen to Jpop and not everything is on a digital service. Not that I want to sign up for a digital service to begin with. I just buy the CD, rip it, then toss the CD on the shelf/drawer and never touch it again until I move house.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

It's not, by any measure or known mechanism. Vinyl is in both theory and practice measurably worse in every way we are able to measure.

It is true folks.
It was only on very high end turn tables did vinyl start to approach descent quality levels.
Turntable suffer from wow and flutter, pickup noise, and being very sensitive to vibration. Not even counting the wear on the records themselves.
DBX encoded albums really did make a huge step in reproduction fidelity but it was an expensive system that never really cough on.

 

[bman212121]

New vinyl sucks and is pointless. Old vinyl is good, because it is a direct analog copy of the master. It is the cleanest copy of that music you could get. Not a copy of a 1990s hyper compressed re release.. I have a decent turntable but rarely use it because vinyl is so inconvenient. Couple years of dollar bin collecting and eBay deals. Ive ran out of room.

This is the part that's certainly the most interesting to discuss. If you're talking about old music that was authored to a metal original, then yes you might be able to get as close as you can to the original with that. Except that you actually can't. The process to make a vinyl disc involves several steps of casting and recasting to finally make the stamping die that makes the record. It's never going to be a perfect process and you can bet that anomalies will creep up depending upon quality control. Some presses of the record are just going to be better than others, and if it was a mass produced item you can bet the variations are wider. Depending upon your process to convert it to digital, you certainly could lose more fidelity if you had to take a pressed record and convert that into digital format. However, I'm guessing some of the best processes would just use a laser to measure the original master, and then use a formula to convert those to digital. A cheap conversion of the first kind would likely be worse than a record, the second could potentially be better, or at least produce more consistent results.

But if we're talking about music that was recorded digitally in the first place, a CD is always going to be consistent. A CD is a literal 1:1 of whatever they decided was going to be put on the first disc. I'm sure even some CDs will have a slight variance and hiccup on a few of the bits, but for the most part it should be more consistent than an analog press because the information stored on it is uniform. If there's a pit on the disc, that's a type of bit, and if there isn't, that's the other type. A record is a lot more complicated than that, and has varying sized cuts into the surface that control different tones. The resolution of these can technically be infinite in the analog world, which is where analog can sometimes shine because it can provide more accurate information of the source, but if it isn't controlled or has noise than the higher accuracy is lost. But if the original source was digital, there is no infinite scale to derive the information from. If in the digital world you had 0 - 255 to represent a bit of data, you can only make 255 different types of cuts into a record because you don't know if the actual data was supposed to be closer to one or the other. Example being if you data said a bit is 124, it will be represented as 124 on both the cd and the vinyl. If the true original was supposed to be 124.32, neither media will have that because it wasn't in the source data. That's a long way of saying that the possible advantage that a record could have had is likely lost using a digital source, and you're better off using something that will produce consistent results.

TL;DR: A 100% analog path may or may not provide better accuracy than a mixed path, and a 100% digital path should provide the most accurate data from the original source.

Which of the two sounds better? The one that has been tuned to your liking.

 

[Jagger100]

You pretty much need a computer and some rudimentary computer understanding to manage a digital library of tunes. Since phones rule now, people will either stream which doesn't count a purchased download or buy other media. Also in some cases it's cheaper to buy CD and rip to your format of choice including lossless than buy the mediocre digital format directly.