Btw I totally agree, both are a great option, I actually prefer some songs in digital, while for others I really like the way the vinyl sounds. It really also depends on how well the vinyl is made.
I grew up with something like this before the cd came out.
And honestly I had and still have a lot more connection to music.
I don’t have that with the streamings, because I don’t appreciate it that much.
And when you put a record on it is just a better feeling than a click on the mouse. 
The younger generation doesn’t even know what a record player is, most of them don’t even know what a record player is.
I still have a couple of records and cd’s and with today’s dac’s you can get a little bit more out. 
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And good Cd Player or turntable can be found again and again on the after Market.
Surely such a thing takes up space in the apartment that is a disadvantage, a hard disk is quickly bought and plugged in and needs no space.
But purely out of nostalgia and handling I prefer this if I can.
The collecting of vinyl is like collecting baseball cards or collecting watches.
The snake oil helps the false artificial scarcity of a collecting hobby.
From a sound perspective…idk, I think it provides a unique sound, ymmv on “better”.
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Great topic, learned something new on bass signal. Think records are like a time machine a way to experiance the sound at the time the music was recorded. Audio marty mcfly.
And its an excuse to get more gear.
Actually early vinyls (pre-1948[0]) were recorded directly to the vinyl master although the quality wasn’t up to much.
0: When tape started to be used for mastering. I have a CD which is a dump of the master tapes Lead Belly recorded in 1948 and you can hear his excitement at the quality he was hearing.
Hi-rez downloads snake oil too ?
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Yea, you should only use Hi-Rez audio LAN or WLAN ports for music downloads.
Sound will not be the same when going trough a standard LAN port.
Almost forgot. Hi-Res audio network cables also. Combination of both or nothing.
How much dynamic range and resolution is lost when going through LAN or WLAN ports ?
Niche, but saw on the youtubes high resolution music being sold on memory card in japan. Which i would buy for the novelty. Also assume that would sell internationally where streaming and digital download in not available.
Great that there is option.will spend the extra $2 for the download i really liked or if its a track that is known to be recorded/mix for the highest playback fidelity.
Generally no but they could be if it’s just an upsampled version of a cd quality copy (but that’s not common to have a reputable site sell you something like that).
The main benefit to some of the high res downloads are that for older albums they either end up being better quality tape transfers or remasters, which can definitely be worthwhile. For new releases, if it’s something like 24/44.1 vs 16/44.1 it might not make an appreciable difference if there isn’t a remaster, but if you can get a track in the native high res format it was mixed and mastered in that can sometimes provide a nice quality bump depending on your dac and how it handles higher resolution files (if the artist actually used high res samples and recordings at least, but you avoid dithering either way so that’s good).
Generally as a rule of thumb if it isn’t too expensive I would pick up high res stuff if I can, but I wouldn’t be worried about it if I can only get cd quality either, as long as it’s at least cd quality lossless it’s good
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So for a lower hominid like myself, audiophile vinyl is a singer 911 and hires digital is 2020 911GT ?
I think the availability of 24 bit formats tends to let engineers mix with less compression and more dynamic range, so the masters end up better.
Assuming they aren’t just aiming for loud.
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That’s true for sure, but it depends on the engineer and the mastering, I have seen times where there ends up being little sonic difference in comparison, but there are times where there is a large enough difference to make it worthwhile. Ideally you would work in a 32 bit workspace (typically floating point) for music production but don’t want to get into that as it can really differ in practice lol. If the 24 bit is native and the actual files were in 24 bit then it can make the difference imo, but at times it just ends up where you might pay 2x more for not much benefit depending on the album cost
My theory is most of the issue with CD masters was with the final mix down, where when listening back at 44/16 which I assume engineers had to do, things didn’t sound good.
The availability of 24 bit masters for sale I think probably alleviates some of that issue.
I guess i don’t have any other excuse for why CD sounded so terrible early on as direct master tape transfers and so compressed later.
I’m sure there are still plenty of terrible masters being released.
That is where things can get somewhat messy in comparison to the 24 bit masters. Dithering can sometimes be fine or sound like ass, depends on the quality and type of the dither and the material itself, generally quantization distortion isn’t too much of an issue anymore, but from what I know it used to be a bigger issue. If you work in a true 32 bit fixed point, you might even have to dither twice which is not good for sound quality which some may have done in the past lol. But if you work in a 24 bit or 32 bit floating point workspace you don’t have to dither if you just release the 24 bit master so that does lend to some quality improvements imo (ofc you will still have to dither your 16 bit release since the majority of people will not be listening to your 24 bit release unless you only target audiophiles with your music which generally is not always a good idea). Also as you note previously the ability for 24 bit to have more headroom and potentially less quality loss during editing is good to have for sure (but then people may make the argument that 24 bit is only helpful for production and not consumption)
I mean at this point it comes down to skill in mastering lol, blame the people not the tech here
I have never listened to vinyl, but I would assume it comparable to using tubes or purposefully listening to “lofi” mixes. It’s just different and has a fun factor.
I wish this discussion was combined in a previous thread that was talking about the benefits of vinyl if any which clearly is not a straight forward answer.
People easily forget why digital came about in the first place. Records wear out, it’s the very nature of a stylus in a vinyl groove and not something that will sound the same the first time it was played versus the 100th time it was played. They required active maintenance to keep clean, dust and fingerprint magnets and in some cases would easily warp.
Let’s face it, the best thing about albums was the cover art, the rest is romanticized to the point of delusion once we get past the technical pros/cons.
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I think it came down to both can sound excellent and just as good as each other in the high end, vinyl is more expensive in general (both higher cost in playback and medium), vinyl is a more physical and emotional experience than digital, and it all comes down to preference and budget for what makes sense, neither are snake oil and both are equally valid forms of playback
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Vinyl sounds like Vinyl.
Really good Vinyl setups can have astonishing clarity and dynamics in the mid range. They sound unique for reasons mentioned above.
But really good Vinyl setups are stupid expensive even by my standards and I own 2 $3K+ DAC’s.
If your going to invest in a Vinyl setup you have to have enough good quality Vinyl to make it worth while, and that is getting expensive especially for sort after recordings, plus there is the maintenance and the inconvenience.
I’m pretty sure it was mostly just the fact the record companies saw an opportunity to resell their back catalog, coupled with mastering moving to digital.
But I think it was largely successful because of the convenience factor.
FWIW I have CD’s I bought in the 90’s that will no longer play because of bit rot, There are 100 year old records that are still in good condition.
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This is a personal anecdote though, can you compare the amount of trashed vynil out there versus CD? I have 100’s of CDs that I purchased in the 80s. not one of them has rot. I’ve seen them, but that’s customer abuse, and when it comes to abuse vinyl loses.
We can have a discussion about the technical pros/cons but if we pick a random YouTube rip of an old album, you’re guaranteed to hear pops and vinyl noise that was not part of the original master.
The only time when I look to vinyl is when the mastering of the CD is shit, particularly if the CD mastering is brickwalled to death. Oftentimes, the vinyl release has considerably less of the brickwalling or compression that went into the CD mastering. As to old vinyl, sometimes those had a better source, or are closer to the original source tapes, than later CD reissues.
I’m not saying that all vinyls are superior to CD’s, or vice versa, as I heard plenty of crappy warmpoo vinyls out there.
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