CDs That Sound Great!

hi, scott seward, vinyl enthusiast here. had no idea how to find an appropriate thread, just wanted to give a shout-out to this cd i was listening to the other day. John Williams Conducts John Williams - The Star Wars Trilogy - The Skywalker Symphony. came out on Sony Classical way back in 1990. Holy Toledo! does it ever sound good. Like, wow! full and rich and just HUGE. "in super bit-mapped sound". 20-bit technology, don't you know. i am a lover of good recorded sound. and i like to give credit where credit is due.

John Eliot Gardiner Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique: Beethoven 9 Symphonies

the can re-issues on sa-cd

my award goes to Bob Ludwig's work on the Roxy Music remasters. stunning!

thank god i don't have to worry about all the chaos re carts, needles, and inner groove distortion etc.
no disrespect to the vinyl lovers, but damn, those threads make it sound like its way too much effort to enjoy a record.

p.s. for every album i have on cd and vinyl - the cd sounds better.

I’ve never really had any problems with turntables or vinyl, except I had to futz with the motor speed on my newest one. I’ve never had expensive equipment.

Anyways:

Kendrick Lamar: good kid maad city

genuine question : can you tell a difference between the cd version of that album and its vinyl version ?

i have quite a few albums on cd and vinyl, and the cd edition is always the best sounding option.

I do think it’s funny how every one of those threads mentioning vinyl in the title ends up dissolving into the intricacies of maintaining a turntable setup.

exactly my point.

lol I swear it's only because lockdown is making me nuts. I'm basically Hal from Malcolm in the Middle now. It's a neat hobby & it's cool to get into all the mechanical pieces but yeah, you're not really gonna beat FLACs. That said the "chaos re carts, needles, and inner groove distortion etc." is basically down to getting the right cart & aligning it properly

genuine question : can you tell a difference between the cd version of that album and its vinyl version ?

my receiver doesn't have a cd player but I can certainly tell the difference between MP3 and vinyl. I've A/B tested it a bunch. digital sounds sharper & more accurate while vinyl is fuzzier and deeper. I think from an objective standpoint the CD is pretty much always gonna be "better" but I do like that vinyl doesn't give me ear fatigue as quickly. Vinyl generally has more dynamic range to my ears though that may just be listening to original copies vs. remastered (and sometimes brickwalled) CD reissues. Certainly I've picked up new vinyl that sounds like garbage, but in those cases the digital version usually sounds pretty bad too.

a lot of new stuff is only available on vinyl or it’s easier to find a vinyl copy but whatever

old stuff, easier to find vinyl copies I mean

yeah, i get all that stuff re brickwalled cds.
but, and i realise this is contentious, give me an album that sounds big and massive albeit a little compressed, as opposed to the vinyl extras of lumps and bumps.

D.Lanois’ “For the Beauty of Wynona” sounds so good on CD that e’en tho I’m generally a pretty committed vinyl guy, I have a hard time believing it could possibly sound any better on vinyl, & probably worse, and I’m not gonna spend $50+ to find out.

Same with Steve Earle’s “Train a-Comin’”, altho I did buy a vinyl version which was a bad remaster (possibly cut direct from the CD) and sounded like a ass.

Doug Sax version of “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” is mind-bendlingly good.

I feel like there was a sweet spot for CDs between about 1990 and 1995 where they had figured out some of the bugs but the loudness wars hadn’t fully kicked in yet, where mass-market CDs (as opposed to stuff that’s targeted at audiophiles) were about as good as anything is ever going to get.

Sweet, what DAC you playing them thru?

(all of these threads can get doinked up)

As much as I don't like to fiddle with equipment because when it comes to technology I've had too many one step forward two steps back moments, I'm so in love with the vinyl format for the large artwork and the tangible physicality + collector's fun side of it. If I wasn't then I probably wouldn't want to deal with the hassle of upkeep. I know my setup is insufficient to make a real argument about sound quality vs CDs or FLAC etc.

xposts

Most Columbia legacy CDs seem to be excellent.

otm Evan.

When there are real differences in the sound, we're talking about different masterings. Not everything is getting a different version for vinyl no matter how busy the digital release is. I've got last year's Charli XCX on vinyl and it's just low volume. Still a bit of fun.

yeah that's mostly true, though as I understand it you have to at least somewhat adjust the levels when pressing to vinyl, I think you at least need to bring the bass down because preamps are designed to boost it. I think because vinyl has so many things you can fiddle with & the fact both the stylus and record can get dirty it's easier to listen with a critical ear and think "hmmm, something's not quite right". but then I switch to the digital version and find it mostly sounds the same. the 'differences' I'm hearing are mostly cosmetic, like viewing a picture through slightly different lenses. on occasion you'll find something where the vinyl version is clearly mastered better or worse, or something fun like my copy of Before and After Science which has a different mix on "King's Lead Hat" which I hadn't heard before.

Adjusting level and the EQ for bass does constitute a unique mastering, sure. I'm not even sure where exactly this supposedly crosses into remixing. But then I've read stuff that would have us believe "brickwalling" is not a thing on vinyl at all, but that doesn't seem to be true.

fwiw I've got two styluses for my one table, one is fuzzy and boomy like you'd typically associate with vinyl and the other is sharper and more CD like. The same differences i could roughly approximate with a software EQ on digital. Whatever one of a kind experience vinyl-loving audiophiles are talking about has to be way out of my price range ultimately

how do you decide which stylus to use prior to listening to an album ?

all these discussions get bogged down because is really two different questions: 1) which mastering do you prefer, and 2) which format do you prefer. i prefer the vinyl format because its compromises are more musical (to my ear). cds (not just some of them but *all* of them) suffer from a smearing in the time domain due to digital filtering, which my particular brain perceive as, well, fatigue. it's not something you can necessarily hear in an a/b test. it's a perception, not a question of sound quality. after some period of listening, i don't want to listen anymore. in my opinion, that is a more-or-less a fatal flaw. the format repels close listening. for me. that's not to say that cds don't do other things really great. a really well-mastered cd can sound amazing (for the first few minutes, before my brain starts telling me to do something else).

oh i don't (re-balancing and all that, they're different carts), that's just based on my impression when i swapped it... and reading about the two confirmed their sounds. Just doinking around seeing what the difference could be. Table was a cheap garage sale find... The Internet says to always change the needle on such things but whatever

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