Is Vinyl significantly better? I've noticed vinyl being pushed more heavily lately and i've never heard any modern music on it.

Maybe it's better for DJs and stuff, but how could vinyl possibly sound better? That seems like saying that black & white is better than colour.

This is incredibly wrong

If you have good turntable and sound system vinyl will actually sound better. If you using your parents old ****ty turntable thats on top of their old stereo then yes it will sound like ****.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_...ital_recording

If properly pressed and played back through a decent system, it usually has vastly superior sonics.

This is not only due to the media itself and its analog reproduction but vinyl releases are mastered differently. Far less agressively since it won't have to compete in the radio loudness wars and due to the media's analog limits on volume, after all a needle can only bounce back and forth so fast before it skips.

This makes for a much more dynamic sounding song, instead of overcompressed, distorted, ear-raping albums, such as Metallica's Death Magnetic.

Google "loudness war" if you want to know about how over the years music has been gradually sounding louder and louder at the cost of sonic quality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

couldn't be more wrong. on a good stereo/record player vinyl sounds better than a CD/mp3 any day. may not be the most convenient to listen to, but as far as sound quality goes there's nothing close.

I used to buy a lot of super heavy import vinyl, including a lot of the Mosaic stuff. My system, while hardly of uber-audiophile quality, was far better than average. And I was more than happy to make the digital jump. No surface noise and a cleaner sound, durability, more playing time per disc (although some might argue that wasn't a good thing, and I might agree), no need to get off my stoned ass to flip the record over.

A few years ago, I listened to an Oscar Peterson session on both high vinyl and CD, through a friend's system. The friend was a former jazz musician, sightless since birth. A Presbyterian minister who converted from Judaism, no less. Interesting cat, Neal was. Anyway, I mention the "sightless" part to emphasize just how much audio quality meant to him; he always maintained a top of the line system. Anyway, we did this because our hipster doofus buddy made the same claim.

The CD was far, far better. Little things came out in the digital recording that were simply not audible on the vinyl. The record had that surface noise, which some people consider "warm" noise. But the digital copy was far better, and more realistic.

Granted, this was a jazz album, with no drums, to boot. Far easier to mix, and far more time probably taken than was on most pop records.

We then put on a symphonic piece that we had on both formats, some later von Karajan direction. I don't even remember the piece, just that it was one he had recorded specifically for CD and was later made available on high quality vinyl. I think it was some Richard Strauss thing. Anyway, there was little difference in definition, but wind instruments just sounded better to me on the vinyl. Somehow more live. This may have been the surface noise playing tricks on me, and, again, the surface noise caused a lot of issues.

It is more a matter of how much (and what kind) of effort is put into digital production, than simply the format itself. Production of high and equal quality will, when reproduced in digital format, sound more realistic. But, as gaBRiel.s mentioned, analog recording tends to "soften" the sound to let some detail in that otherwise might be lost in a giant sonic wall.

Plus, a lot of things are recorded digitally, now. If recorded improperly, little is gonna help. And a lot of things are shoddy recordings.

Yeah, a lot of newer pop music is mixed specifically to be as detail free, it seems, as possible. The bulk of it is for public consumption, not audiophiles. I certainly wouldn't say vinyl has "vastly superior dynamics", all other things being equal, but if you spend enough bread on your turntable, it can be a different listening experience, again, due to the reasons gaBRiel.s mentioned.

The loudness war information makes a very good point, but it is more an indictment of the watering down of standards than valid critical truism of either form, in and of itself. The wiki-article Nuisance linked to was quite interesting, as well, but it certainly didn't come to a conclusion, nor have many audio experts.

However, I would argue that money spent on equipment would be better spent on the music itself. You can listen to music, or you can watch the meters and waveforms to see which is "better". To each his own.

Frankly, nothing ever sounded quite as good as that 45 rpm single of Elvis singing "Hound Dog", played on my old Show-and-Tell record player. Hardly a high-end sound reproduction system.

Cheap nostalgia, I'm sure, but it was still a life-changing experience.

Used to believe this but its become pretty clear its down to poor recording quality on CDs rather than any inherent disadvantage (the reverse is true in fact and a its vinyl that has the sonic limitations).

Still have an LP12 (Linn sondek) for all my old records, most cannot be replaced because there simply are no high quality digital versions (not because there couldn't have been). Where I have a decent CD (Roger waters - amused to death for example) it sounds great even on a relatively cheap CD transport.

I'm aware some would burn me at the stake for this view.

[The other problem with cds is they are of course indestructable which translates to when they get scratched they have to be thrown away]