Analog vs Digital, VINYL vs. CD - bitPERFECT with Andrew Robinson EP02

While I don't personally collect or listen to vinyl records, I've always been captivated by the sheer beauty of vinyl covers and platters. The larger format really brings the artwork to life, making them visually appealing pieces to appreciate. 👍

To be fair, the nuanced variations in quality are meaningless to me. When I was young I could hear bats. Now I can't even hear grasshoppers 😟 but for practicality I go for CDs every time. There are charity shops around me that have thousands of CDs in all genres at 4 for £1. They are so cheap you can just suck it and see like surfing a streaming service and there is always a chance of finding a gem or a long lost album from my past. I generally do a lossless rip to my music player and keep the disc as backup. I also never have to worry about endlessly paying a subscription to preserve my collection on a streaming service. Just for info I use a Hidizs AP80 PRO-X paired with the DH80 amp and Sennheiser Momentum or Grado 80e headphones.

⁠Vinyl records being analog media, the analog sound waveforms are literally engraved on the vinyl grooves and then reproduced by converting the vibrations caused by those waveforms into an electrical analog signal that is in turn amplified and converted back into sound waves by the speakers. Since all this sound information is present in the physical world, it also creates small resonances which are pleasant to hear since they are not random frequencies, but in synch with the fundamental signal. This generates the warmth people use to describe the sound of vinyl record playback, just like how an acoustic guitar does, versus the “purity” of a digital signal, which sounds empty in comparison ☺️

Well, wav, aiff, flac, alac, all are better then both those one.. and although vinyl is analog they don't have all frequency sound range, CD's and other digital formats has much wider range so the sound is better

It’s such sad world, when you have to beg people not to get triggered over a personal opinion, given with pure motives 😕

Ask yourself how long it took you to fall in love with the random button on your digital music player, holdind your whole music collection, me one second, end of discussion

An interesting debate . I wonder what people think about remastered CDs ?
I’m currently replacing some of my CDs with newer remastered versions but whilst on the whole most are an improvement on the original cd release not all of them are an improvement
I like the album “ The Crossing “ by Big Country but I think the original cd has a tinny weak produced sound so I bought the remaster of this album expecting it to be much improved but unfortunately I was very disappointed with it .
So folks , please let me know where you stand on buying remastered CDs ?

The format the music I play depends on the mood and what I'm after in my listening experience at the time. So for me no format is better than each other. Some songs sound better on cd whilst others sound better on vinyl.

When you buy stereo equipment you look at the specs right wouldn't you do the same on CD's vs records and some records use digital tapes so much for analog but each his own it's your money nobody can tell you how to spend it

CD

How many people buy vinyl without owning a turntable? Did you say 50%?

For me, vinyls are the best, only because CDs always sounded washed out, and now they’re to compressed (overly loud) just like digital..compressed, overly loud etc

I have my 1978 Olympus OM1 film camera and my modern Fuji XT3.

The film camera will never match the clinical results of the new tech, but with the correct equipment, can get damn near close.

At the end of the day, my digital camera will never have the soul and colors in the film shots I have. I specifically picked Fuji just for its Film Emulations.

Same for Vinyl to me.

Cd is by far superior to vynil, there is no objective measurement to the audio quality where vynil out performs cd the same with tube amplifiers verses modern amplifiers

I was afraid you would pick an album that was created during the loudness wars for CDs. And you did.

Cd wins for Sound quality No doubt

Everything is subjective, until you measure it. High resolution digital is better than vinyl. More dynamic range, more S/N, less distortion, and jitter is not a modern issue. I have noticed the people that are likely to believe a $1000 power cable makes a difference, are the same people to believe in catastrophic climate change. lol. More impressionable than most.

Vinyl to me is better overall. Which is strange even to me because I'm not even the biggest fan of the warmth people talk about, I have my treble raised so I can have a sparkly high end, and with my system it sounds super close to cds. When comparing my systems setting to CDs it's having the sparkliness of CDs with the smooth fluidity of vinyl instead of the sharpness CD tends to have. So ive actually managed to find a perfect balance between both worlds.

Now completely ignoring sound quality, vinyl is just so much cooler. 12x12 is the coolest format for art and you're essentially buying canvases of your favorite albums, along with any other extras in the liner notes it comes with. Not to mention that vinyl is just souch more available than CDs are, bands and artists I listen to tend to lean more toward vinyl releases than CDs, so it just makes sense to go for that instead.

Both have their pros and cons to sound quality that can easily be altered with eq settings to your preferences, it's just a matter of which object would you rather hold?

My experience: Unless you're talking about low bid rate MP3, mastering is so variable, and the most important factor. I'm a CD/Hi-Res download guy only.

Ha ha I'm on cassettes now 😅

The best format is the one that has the master you prefer.

Technology and media formats move faster than we realize. CDs were my teen years and the grunge scene cemented my love for music. It was such a dramatic leap forward from cassettes and Vinyl. And then Napster MP3s happened which were only 5mb at the time. The mp3 quality was fair enough but now I had access to the world's catalog without any scratched up media skipping parts of the song. The beauty of vinyl and tape was the intent and purpose to listen as part of a ritual which forced artists to make better albums.

I think this was a flawed experiment.. I think you should compare an analogue recording and pressing with an analog recording that has been digitally remastered. That’s what people refer to as sounding better on vinyl for the most part, although there are certainly cases of digital recordings sounding better on vinyl more than often due to better mastering.

I strongly suspect Moby’s Play is not an analogue recording, and given the time period, we are talking about a time in vinyl manufacturing when many had stopped releasing vinyl, fewer pressings were made of those that did, and many even used CD masters for the vinyl cutting. 90’s vinyl onwards is mostly digital recording, digital mastering, but there are exceptions. Unfortunately this was not a great period for great sounding vinyl regardless.

Vinyl sound is in part also dependent on manufacturing, and there’s actually some really interesting history there. But I don’t think you can form an informed opinion based on a single album.

Being a senior citizen with admittedly deteriorated hearing from when I was in my 20's, I have been collecting vintage CD's for the last few years from a variety of sources. Many of the CD's are from the same era as the original LP's that I have in my collection. I find that the differences vary widely album to album. While I am not into current music (I couldn't tell you the name any Taylor Swift song), I do have both albums and duplicate CD's from a wide array music styles. I think that the source, engineering, and mastering of the media is far more important than the actual distribution method. The best mastered LP's I have are from the sixties and seventies were from Phase 4 Stereo and Command records. The CD versions of these albums, where they are available, are fairly faithful remasters of the original LP's. All of my CD's have been ripped and are on my digital player. I do not use streaming, as I prefer to own the media I like.

CD always

I love listening to reggae on vinyl I think it better than a cd.

CD is a compact portable format Vinyl records are a non portable format. They are both digital, enough with the vinyl is analogue and so much more pure. Even though automakers have removed the head unit from cars you can still listen with a portable cd player and fm transmitter in your car and it sounds better than streaming.

Streaming for convenience, Vinyl for the feel and look... CD for the sound (and a little bit of feel and look). Assuming they are all coming from the same mastering, which has a much greater impact on sound than any format.

I love vinyl. For me it wil always be vinyl. In my experience vinyl just sounds warmer. Music is about feeling so that’s worth it for me.

I think it mostly to do with the choices made by the mastering engineer. Digital just gives them more options to change the sound, so vinyl can end up being a truer representation of the master source.

High quality Tapes ( cassette) is maybe the best

It is all digital, no more analog sound

It has a lot do with the cartridge you’re using

Interesting topic. I think however the topic is more complicated than that. Areally good vinyl pressing (not necessarily an audiophile one) will beat the CD every day of the week. However, a shitty vinyl pressing, and I have plenty of those as well, will easily place last, well after tidal.

The short answer: it depends. A slightly longer answer: it depends on the CD player, turntable and the CDs and vinyls themselves.

The perfection is in the imperfection....... Vinyl sings more for me.

Tidal is now streaming this on Max quality.

We as humans listen in analogue and linear not digital it’s only because of zeros and ones that we do

For classical music, Audio CD is the King format! The quietest moments on Vinyl sound as if a thousand sandpapers be marching through some fancy sandy beach.

You listen to different versions and cycles on Spotify, then you buy the CD of the one you find yourself going back to, at an affordable price or buy its WAVE file (the closest digital form of Audio CD) from Presto Music etc. and write your own Audio CD, if the original CD cost too much. If using Nero to burn, write at the lowest speed, do not normalise tracks, choose no pause betwixt tracks, and do not remove silence at the end of tracks.

Surround sound for classical music is for those who do not appreciate quality or know anything about classical music; a good 2-channel solid stereo mix has been, still and forever more shall remain the best for classical music, the only music that matters!

Just to confirm:
Streaming is WORSE than vinyl?
R E A L L Y?!🤔

Good choice of an album. I have owned Play for years on CD. I find that the quality of comparison varies, especially if you compare an album recorded in the 70's and remastered later for CD. Music is emotional, and sometimes what sounds best is what we are emotionally connected to for whatever reason. Handling an LP adds a huge physical component to the listening experience, that enhances it for many of us, myself included. I love listening to Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" while reading a fold open and down, multi-page newspaper. Vinyl record covers still offer that experience, either in the written word or in the artwork. Opening and reading the words of Mingus on an LP cover offers a better experience than reading a CD insert. Looking at the artwork of Roger Dean on almost every Yes album enhances the experience, and whether that is nostalgia kicking in I don't know, but it all adds to the emotional experience. For classical music, I do have a preference for CD, and newer recordings if the performances are up to it, however, I still prefer Rubinstein's Chopin to anyone else's, and I like those on vinyl--probably for the nostalgia.

The thing I like about CD’s is that I can put a various artists or a compilation disc in the CD player and hit the random play button, can’t do that with records

My personal preference is a 78 rpm victrola played into a microphone, broadcast in AM, and listened to on a vintage tube radio. Doesn't get any better.

Reel to Reel and Records will win every time, end of story,

Interesting. A key statement you made was regarding the format being a ‘delivery’ format. Most people don’t understand that. As for the listening experience, I can’t think of any recording that was direct to the lathe. The costs would be staggering to say the least. Therefore, the recording was either digital (which means you’re already into the digital sound) or on tape. If the source was tape, that opens another casket of worms that invalidates the quality of performance question.

Vinyl is great if you like rumble, surface noise, 10 minutes of sound per side and rolled off top and bottom end. You must also enjoy the RIAA profile or you have at least gotten used to it. In the final answer, cutting vinyl is compromise one top of compromise. It doesn’t if something sounds good, if the needle can’t pay it, you’ve got to change it. Over cuts, under cuts, bass bouncing stereo and dynamic range all play a role rather than the actual performance. I used to cut records in the 70s and today I don’t even own a working turntable.

Compressing digital sound is a choice. Compressing for vinyl is a requirement to get a disk that will play! Without it, the disk will have skips and burps all over the place. Terrible format to work with.

As of December 2024, the vinyl record manufacturing industry is facing several challenges. Lead times for pressing new records have extended significantly, with some plants quoting up to 12 months due to high demand and limited production capacity. Rising costs of raw materials like PVC have also driven up production costs, contributing to a 33% drop in vinyl sales compared to the previous year. Additionally, issues with spare parts and downtime have further impacted production efficiency. The industry is working to address these challenges, but the current situation remains complex.

i have both a recordplayer and a cd player both sound good in my opinion

ADDITION: Just after recording this video I noticed that one of my TIDAL settings had changed (due to an update) and I did not catch it before recording this video. All things considered, even TIDAL HiFi quality had little difference between it and CD, and conversely vinyl. It should also be noted, that for a lot of people the "difference" in formats might be little more than a change in SPL. For example, through the Technics SL-G700 SACD/CD/Media Player, physical CDs had (on average) a +7-10dB increase over streaming (in any format). It's an even greater difference between CD and vinyl. Match the SPL levels and things become EVEN MORE MURKY. We will be discussing Hi-Res or MASTER quality audio in a future video. Thanks for watching, apologize for any potential confusion.