I know CD is still better, but I hear people say things like vinyl sounds warmer. Is it just a meme or does vinyl really have a quality to it that makes it sound nicer?

>>127163218 (OP)
Depends on your setup and the recording. People ITT with little firsthand experience will make all kinds of overbroad claims about one format or the other, but the question is too open-ended and general to answer faithfully. A tube amp sounds warm, there's no doubting that. Does a warm sound suit your speakers, the recordings you're listening to, your own personal preference, etc? We can't answer for you

99% of vinyl releases now are just digital recordings pressed to vinyl.

>>127163218 (OP)
I like vinyl for classical and vintage jazz. As others have said, most modern vinyl is just a pressing of a digital remaster, so meh.

>>127163218 (OP)
Vinyl is mastered differently than CD because people pressing records have to worry about sibilance, RIAA equalization, a few other things.

I have a couple hundred records, and I'd say only 2 of them sound definitively better than any digital version I've heard. Run Out Groove's 2020 pressing of Good by Morphine is the best sounding album I've ever heard.

>>127163218 (OP)
Certain vinyl sounds better like 12" dance singles that are meant for DJs. But CDs are way more reliable. Until they also get scratched. You could get around this by physically playing your music on a guitar.

No

>>127163218 (OP)
There's nothing special about the sound whatsoever. It sounds worse than CDs/digital on average and you hear popping noises.
Vinyl is just for people who like the idea of playing their music through analogue means, and being able to physically hold an album with its big artwork printed on it. That's it.

>>127164957
This

>>127163218 (OP)
You can get much the same qualities by using a valve amplifier. That is, harmonic distortion, noise, and rolled off high end

>>127163218 (OP)
If vinyl was good, classical music fans would buy them

(If you want vinyl, buy old records. Even shoddy 80s bargain bin reissues on floppy plastic will sound better than current "ultra silent" reissues on 220g)
Listening to records from the good times they sound less sterile/warmer, and more intimate to me than their digital counterpart.
No, I probably wouldn't be able to detect any differences in a high end A/B test. But I don't operate in that environment so what does that matter?
Objectively, the sound itself probably has more to do with the mastering >for the fomat and its limitations than any intrinsic qualities of the material colouring the sound.
But speaking of intrinsic qualities:
the beautiful thing about vinyl records is that each reading process is also a writing process (the needle records), means >each time you listen to a record your experience gets imprinted on that piece of plastic.
Also makes it a finite experience and each listening somewhat special.

>>127163218 (OP)
DDD violins sound screechy af on cd
Hotel California on CD was what got me to make the switch from vinyl

>>127166807
They do, go to steve hoffman and look up "mercury living presence" or "rca living stereo"

>>127163218 (OP)

vinyl LPs were developed to be cheap to mass produce, not for best sound quality. The then new material of vinyl a plastic made from petroleum could hold finer more precise grooves so the speed of the discs rotation could be reduced as low as possible to put as much music on it for cheap. Vinyl LP spin at a constant rate meaning the amount of groove used to record each second of audio varies from the start of the disk to the end compromising sound quality. Its as if the first track on a CD was 44khz sample rate and the last was only 22khz. Vinyl sound has to be put through the RIAA equalization to reduce low frequency on the disc then restore it. But this adds a layer of sound processing which introduces more potential for distortion.

>>127168784
>vinyl LPs were developed to be cheap to mass produce, not for best sound quality
LPs were a notable improvement in sound quality from shellac, their immediate predecessor. I think sentence #1 is flawed here. Home 4-track reels, which some think sound better, came out later. The LP was king of sound quality for quite a while. Don't forget, LPs hit the market all the way back in 1949