As far as sound quality, I think you still get the same sound quality with a CD as you can vinyl. Taking into account what the human ear can actually recognize instead of theoretical and technical differences. It's not like any lossless sound quality, albeit codec, vinyl or CD would sound any different. As far as I know people can't even tell the difference between even a 320kbps file and a lossless sound codecs. I don't mean to say I necessarily know what a codec stands for, or what kilobyte is. I just know it tech_talk for better or worse sound quality; lossless sound is the higher sound quality than MP3, I know that much.

So what is it about vinyls? I see people with them a lot in the recent purchases thread. If it's not the sound quality, is it the experience that makes them appealing? The big album covers, flipping them over, making it an intimate process of playing the record instead of just flipping through digital albums at the click of a button? Or is it a placebo where you think you're hearing a difference? Just kidding. I'm a person who thinks vinyl is totally cool, and I would choose vinyl over CD if given the chance.

I generally choose CDs though because I can afford them, and I can play them easily on my CD player. I have a vinyl record player, except it's not hooked up. I think vinyl probably the most illogical way to listen to music though. It's expensive. It's laborious. They're hard to store and take care of. I think CDs are cool too. Honestly that's probably the only reason I buy them. I'm not supporting a band or something by buying the out of print stuff I enjoy. An artist only makes a sale once off of physical merchandise. Also, it's not like I can't just download stuff. I mean shit, I hate to say it but it's totally true. Downloading music is 100% easy and average_joe-able.

I think cassettes are all together just a nasty ordeal, and I only get them when they're like a buck. That's all they're worth to me. You have to flip them, sometimes the sides aren't marked, the tape gets eaten by the cassette player sometimes, and I hear they're magnetized and they lose sound quality over a while. Kind of like rotational velodensity that supposedly occurs in MP3 files. I think they're kinda neat.

What's your opinion on these formats? What format do you prefer and why?

Btw, hope two consecutive threads isn't a problem. I'm done making threads now. I just had two things I happen to wanted to make threads about.

I like vinyl, cds and tapes, because they all sound great to me as my stereo is awesome.

Thanks.

All the subjects you want to discuss were discussed 100000000 times but since I don't want to hear you whine, I will not lock these 2 threads. Don't be mad if you only get witty and ironic answers though 'cause these threads are very unoriginal.

My post: I prefer cds, they're affordable, they have good sound quality, they look cool when stocked in shelves and I rip them in 320 kbs (usually) but who cares?

Lets discuss metal now!

I'm all about 8-tracks. I usually dub my vinyls to 8-track and toss em in my car. Following 8-tracks, I'm gonna have to go with wax cylinders. I really like the cylinders due to their degradation. I usually only play my cylinders once while ripping them to the computer. I then record the mp3's to 8-track.

((yes, I have an absurd stock of blank 8-tracks) (I drive a '73 Ford Falcon and I'm keeping the stereo stock) (Yes, the last of the v8's))

The only important thing to keep in mind when it comes to audio media is what kind of sweat lodge you want to build. You wouldn't use vinyl for a foundation; they make far better shingling. Use tapes for the foundation and walls (placed crosswise to maximize stability) and finish the siding and floor with cds. I don't why I'm even having to say this.

Man I haaate this! I'm always SO worn out after playing my tapes and vinyl. As for cds.. don't even get me started! I mean shit, you have to... to... open the case and everything! What a fuckin' chore...

Everything two posts above is also very valid. Would you mind making a CAD illustration of your sweat lodge?

Sorry, I'm busy right now trying to track down the headpiece for the Staff of Ra, but you can look at this website, which has a lot of useful information on sweat lodge construction:

http://www.think-aboutit.com/native/bui ... _lodge.htm

I buy an album and rip it so the CD stays permanently unscratched. I go for 320kb because I can't hear there the difference between anything higher, and 128kb clearly sounds muddy. Which works out for me because a collection of all my music in flac files would be much larger in size, plus it's more accessible and convenient to use mp3's.

Hmm which do I prefer, well cds make great coasters and keep my counter nice and dry, and lps are fun to play frisbee with. Both are my two favorite formats, both have their uses, I really can't pick between which one I like the most though, thats just asking too much, I guess that depends mostly on if I'm thirsty or if I feel like having some fun outside.

Dude, for real?

BTW, "Rotational Velocidensity": You shitting me with that? That is total nonsense.



10" are way better for frisbee. NOT shellacs though!

Shit hurts...

I chuckled

I had a fuck-ton of cassettes and soon moved on to CDs but that dwindled over time because of the INTERWEBZ! I still got my stash back home but I prefer my format to be digital. Planning to start collecting them FLAC files. All the cool kids are doing it these days. Heh.

I'M NOT EVEN MAD! Seriously though, thanks for keeping my thread open, I appreciate it. I think some of these responses are funny as hell, and I don't mind. I'm loving it.

Oh man, it's this thread again.

I buy vinyls and tapes for their cheap price. Vinyl of course is a top priority but if the vinyl version costs a lot I can get the tape version for much less. I buy CDs of those albums that are out on CDs only (Exciter - Better Live Than Dead.)

On a related side note, I sense some butthurt happening soon.

Lol at the effort required to flip tapes around. I know of at least one duff DJ who did his back in from carting around too many record-filled crates.

I just like physical media. I also like my digitised CDs because I'm obsessed with Last FM stats. One night I left a Demon Burger album playing all night (it was for a review for a goth zine). Took me months of listening to other bands to knock them off my top eight.

Records? As in actual LPs? I don't believe in the mystical superior quality of warm analog sound. As I've said before, by the time you reckon you can clearly hear the difference you've probably destroyed an entire couple of spectrums of your hearing.

It's more the fact that you own something in your hand. An object in your hands. And it has moving parts.

It's a bloke thing I think. Who doesn't like mechanical devices that do that?

I generally just get CDs. Easily ripped into a digital format, and just convenient. I only really buy vinyl for display (12"s look fucking awesome, thus why my DMDS and Morbid LPs are overlooking my room) and coolness factor. If I own an album on vinyl, I'll go and steal a digital copy of the internet and listen to that. Tapes are only an occasional thing for me, I don't have a tape player where I currently live, but when I visit the parents I love busting out some tapes. Got some damn cool ones and when I was younger I made some awesome tapes ripped from digital. Terrible sound quality but they're still necro as fuck.

Dude, you know you could basically have just deleted the plays from your last fm... You just click on "see more/edit" wave your cursor over the track you want to erase and an X will appear on the far right that you can click on to erase the track. Probably won't be helpful for that incident at this point, but it's good to know.

pretty much this. will buy on vinyl if I really love an album, find one for cheap, is the only other way to purchase something. Just more difficult to listen to and set aside time to listen to. Plus i need to set up my new stereo equipment and get a new turntable.


Hate tapes, i've traded for tapes to pretty much have them but I don't even listen to them. Even the shit of my own material I've released and was released by others on tape... I haven't even taken out of the plastic wrap.

I personally prefer CDs, the majority of my collection is on CD. I also like tapes, not too many, but I sometimes drive a car with a cassette player and I also like using a Walkman while walking/hiking sometimes, since a Discman tends to skip and I don't always use an mp3 player (my phone doubles as that).



It's not a placebo. Theoretically (and practically), if the same master recording is put to vinyl and to CD, the highest frequencies will roll off and not be heard, but they will otherwise be identical. However, mastering for CD has evolved into its own process, which you can read up on with the Wikipedia entry for "loudness wars". Audio for CDs is brickwall limited and often boosted well beyond recommended guidelines for headroom, thus a lot of clipping occurs. The result is a very loud recording at the expense of some of the dynamic range of the original recording. Often, the audio isn't mastered this way for vinyl (if it is mastered differently) and vinyl versions of albums won't have unnecessary loudness boosts and brickwalling, it'll feel a bit more natural and less compressed. Analog clipping (roll-off) from a source sounds warm, digital clipping sounds harsh. Listen to the CD version of Burzum's "Belus" and the vinyl version, the latter is much less harsh.



That's not a real thing. Tapes can lose quality over time, but I have picked up some well-worn tapes from the 80s that sound fine. Magnetic decay generally isn't a huge concern. I'd guess that more inadvertent damage to tapes is done by tape decks that stretch the tape, but that's not really common. Tapes are cool and compact, a very cheap medium that's great for amateur productions as well as being an accessible analog format for nearly anyone.

CDs, just because they are convenient and take up little space.

I do think vinyl does sound better with the right kind of music that suits it. Mellower stuff and classic rock the difference seems to be more pronounced on, but the few BM vinyl I own sound really great too. But CD does sound really good too. I listen to mp3s all the time, but even at 320 I don't tend to enjoy it as much, but maybe that's because I have an expensive hifi for CD/vinyl, but I listen to mp3s on my laptop or ipod, or maybe just psychologically want physical format to sound better.

However, they can get damaged/warped easily, and that can be annoying, especially when taking the risk of buying used OOP vinyl. Because of the cost factor I usually buy CD rather than vinyl, unless it's an album I really want, in which case I'll pay the bit more.

I prefer CDs, as well. Pretty much for all the reasons discussed above, although mainly for storage and availability. I'll buy a record or cassette for collection purposes or if that's the only format available, but I mainly opt for CDs.

Tapes. You can't really scratch a tape and I can toss it around a bit. Works great in my car because I can rewaind/fast forward to specific songs.

Mixed tapes are awesome. I loved making those when I still had a tape deck in my car, and I still listen to the same tapes I made years ago even now.

In general, I love to dub "beater copies" of stuff on tape because tapes are usually more durable/long-lasting than CD-r's, and they are easy to recycle by simply erasing/re-dubbing (and it's a cinch to make mixes and cue them up just right before dubbing from a PC since I rip most of my music and store it digitally)... Some mixed tapes actually become unique/precious items in their own right after a while, though... they get dirty. the homemade inserts discolor, fade and become creased. the audio itself does degrade a bit (eventually, especially if you're too lazy to clean your tape deck like me)... they develop much character over years of sitting in your car, and many memories become associated with the same sequence of songs played in your car a hundred times.

Since I have no tape player in my car now, it's just fun to recollect all the associations built from particular mixed tapes/cassette albums when I listen to them at home.

I usually end up giving these special old tapes to friends in packages or something after a while if I don't keep them for myself.

I prefer tapes & vinyl to CDs, I still buy some CDs, but I try to get the release on tape or vinyl if I can. For vinyl, the experience of listening to a record to me is always really good, as I tend to focus more on it than if i'm just listening to stuff on my computer. And the large artwork and generally really cool packaging is nice too. As for tapes, honestly, I just think they're pretty cool, and quite cheap.

And the reason I don't like CDs that much is that I find I generally just upload them to iTunes and forget about them, I just don't find them as interesting as the other formats.

only analog tapes are real. I will only buy the CD of a band I've seen live if they're really good, but I love collecting tapes - plus the experimental scene is blowing up because of amazing tape formats.

I only listen to music by humming it in my head. All formats are false.

Legit though, I mainly listen to the music I've ripped from CD or vinyl, and sometimes tape. I do spin CDs and vinyl fairly regularly , but currently my vinyl player is out of commission, so...

Probably my favourite way to go is to buy a CD. I love vinyl, but generally only get it as a gift, or if something is hard as hell/impossible to find on CD, or if I've got a little extra cash.

I'm yet to listen to music from CDs, vinyls or tapes. Anything from 128 kbps and above is listenable. Avoid listening to all those 32 kbps and 64 kbps crap to save your bandwidth. It's shit.

Vinyl. That said, I'd love to get myself something that plays tapes and start collecting some kick ass noise releases

mp3, and nothing but mp3. I even convert m4a and ogg into mp3.

keep your standards low and you don't have to worry so much. #Zen

CD's. I'd probably like vinyl, but I don't have a player, so I don't bother.

Might get back lash for this but for me, it's all about streaming from websites.
I have good speakers for metal so the sound quality isn't noticeable to me and I just simply have no space for a collection of CDs or vinyls.

+1. Digital.
I listen to ALL my music in digital so I rip all to Mp3@320 Kbps.

I buy CDs, and prefer CDs, because the first music I bought came on CD. I rip it to my computer in the highest quality known to man, and then rarely listen to the actual physical CD in an attempt at maintaining its pristine condition for as long as humanly possible.

Paper. I know it's not a sound format, but it's becoming my favorite way to sense music.

Vinyl was my first, but it's hard to listen to it in your car (believe me I tried in the 80's). I still enjoy playing a record, drinking a beer, and looking at the album cover, front to back for the duration of the album. Its what I prefer, but I generally listen a CD or a CD copy in the car, which is where I do the majority of my music listening.

I hope you're using a beer coozie and not just getting the jackets all wet... D:
Getting drunk alone and blasting old Metal and Punk/Crust records is quite fun though, yes.

Lately, since my car has a nice aftermarket stereo with USB in now, I have been using that A LOT, and it's very cool and very convenient... thinking about maybe setting up a velcro strip somewhere with a set of different USB sticks I can grab and switch in/out quickly. I'm still kinda fascinated by the novelty of being able to put so much music onto a little flash drive. It's like I live in the future, but I'm driving a shitty 2002 Ford Focus with both the front and back left-side speakers blown out.

...and, on the subject of speakers... anyone have any quick suggestions for really quality, affordable aftermarket speakers I can replace my stock speakers with? It sucks listening to stereo music with only one side of my car's speakers working. I know nothinnnnnng about this shit, so IDK where to even begin looking... Just know, I don't need "SICK BASS", just something that faithfully reproduces music and can get fairly loud without distorting or blowing out.

Go here http://www.crutchfield.com. They have everything you need to know about car audio and all related components. Once you select your car model make and year you can narrow down what will fit in your car and also sort by price. I'd strongly recommend not trying to do your own installation. I'm about to get two 10 inch subs put in my Charger this Friday. Don't assume bass isn't required for metal. If you don't get a sub, then at least focus on getting speakers that can handle decent bass frequencies as the more you pump the volume the more likely you'll be to blow your speakers. I'd also get the stuff professionally installed unless you have a lot of time for trial and error and don't care if you potentially F up your car. Car audio can get hairy real quick and it's not fun being stuck with a gutted car with nothing to show for it.

i like mp3s, for two main reasons:

1. i realised that, as some kind of white gypsy, i don't WANT to have oodles of physical media to carry around. i own about 400 CDs that i ripped and gave to a mate. he's enjoying them more than me, and all i need is a detachable hard drive. everything's stored in a folder on the HD that it takes all of about 10 seconds to access, and considering i'm rarely without a music-playing device of some sort (laptop, mp3 player) this is perfect for me.
2. i couldn't care less if vinyl sounds ever-so-slightly better than CDs, and most of the time i get the feeling that, for many people who spout the virtues of vinyl, it's less an issue of audio quality and more some kind of elitism that they'll never admit to. to that end i decided that the best thing i could do to combat that is to have the most "artistically stale" format possible - a digital file.