Vinyl VS CDJ's

[Pistonsbeneath]

oh this thread again...

1. Anyone can burn a CD

2. To put a track on Vinyl, it has to be professionally mastered in a very specific way

Therefore:

Tracks on Vinyl often sound better than a rough mixdown on a CD

But technically:

Uncompressed 16-bit 44.1KHz CD audio is immensely higher in quality than Vinyl.

At least one person is going to argue with the above statement, and this is probably because they haven't read any books about Digital Signal Processing or the disadvantages of Analogue electronics. I'm not saying that CD-quality (and higher quality) audio always sounds better than vinyl (I personally enjoy the sound of vinyl), it's just that science would say that digital audio has superior fidelity.

I take it you haven't read books on it yourself both have pro's and con's mate,
Vinyl: higher frequency response yet debatable as it is out of the range of hearing ( digital brick filtered 20-20k)
digital: higher dynamic response
digital: clipping sounds like shit
analog: clipping= harmonic distortion which sounds nice (saturation)
vinyl will sound worse if its dirty, scratched obviously but a clean record will sound as good as a wav.
vinyl has no sample rate limits ie. it will sound better speed adjusted, especially slower as samples have to be repeated algorithmically in digital formats.

What you've said about clipping is irrelevant - clipping whilst playing out will come from the mixing desk which is in the analogue domain not digital. There could be some digital clipping from a really shit mixdown but that could occur in a tune on vinyl or cd format - the result of a poor mixdown like this will be that you cannot drive the sound as loud before it "breaks up" (this is to do with gain staging) but that goes for tunes on vinyl or cd.

I can't be arsed to read whats been said in this thread as theres been a million threads like this b4 and its fucking boring now but im assuming that no-ones mentioned the most important reason why it can suck to play vinyl in the uk and thats because a hell of a lot of promoters are hopeless at setting up a rig. All to often there's feedback from a deck or one is damaged and the outputs distorting etc - this sort of bullshit can ruin the impact of a set big time and make the dj look bad. A lot of soundchecks are done with cdjs now so when vinyl is played it sounds real muddy. Basically although on a well set up rig vinyl will sound better than cd, on a poorly set up rig it will sound fucking awful - I don't get these issues on the continent so why is it such a problem in the uk?

i never saw this as rocket science myself..theres no engineer on the night i play...i just twiddle a few knobs and it usually sounds good....what exactly is needed to get it to sound good in your eyes then?

[rob sparx]

oh this thread again...

1. Anyone can burn a CD

2. To put a track on Vinyl, it has to be professionally mastered in a very specific way

Therefore:

Tracks on Vinyl often sound better than a rough mixdown on a CD

But technically:

Uncompressed 16-bit 44.1KHz CD audio is immensely higher in quality than Vinyl.

At least one person is going to argue with the above statement, and this is probably because they haven't read any books about Digital Signal Processing or the disadvantages of Analogue electronics. I'm not saying that CD-quality (and higher quality) audio always sounds better than vinyl (I personally enjoy the sound of vinyl), it's just that science would say that digital audio has superior fidelity.

I take it you haven't read books on it yourself both have pro's and con's mate,
Vinyl: higher frequency response yet debatable as it is out of the range of hearing ( digital brick filtered 20-20k)
digital: higher dynamic response
digital: clipping sounds like shit
analog: clipping= harmonic distortion which sounds nice (saturation)
vinyl will sound worse if its dirty, scratched obviously but a clean record will sound as good as a wav.
vinyl has no sample rate limits ie. it will sound better speed adjusted, especially slower as samples have to be repeated algorithmically in digital formats.

What you've said about clipping is irrelevant - clipping whilst playing out will come from the mixing desk which is in the analogue domain not digital. There could be some digital clipping from a really shit mixdown but that could occur in a tune on vinyl or cd format - the result of a poor mixdown like this will be that you cannot drive the sound as loud before it "breaks up" (this is to do with gain staging) but that goes for tunes on vinyl or cd.

I can't be arsed to read whats been said in this thread as theres been a million threads like this b4 and its fucking boring now but im assuming that no-ones mentioned the most important reason why it can suck to play vinyl in the uk and thats because a hell of a lot of promoters are hopeless at setting up a rig. All to often there's feedback from a deck or one is damaged and the outputs distorting etc - this sort of bullshit can ruin the impact of a set big time and make the dj look bad. A lot of soundchecks are done with cdjs now so when vinyl is played it sounds real muddy. Basically although on a well set up rig vinyl will sound better than cd, on a poorly set up rig it will sound fucking awful - I don't get these issues on the continent so why is it such a problem in the uk?

i never saw this as rocket science myself..theres no engineer on the night i play...i just twiddle a few knobs and it usually sounds good....what exactly is needed to get it to sound good in your eyes then?

So you think you can fix a broken technics with a few knob twiddles?

[Pistonsbeneath]

oh i see what you mean....never experienced that as they get things fixed when im not there

at a mates house once one of the decks distorted loads during spongebob but ive never had it at a venue

[rob sparx]

oh i see what you mean....never experienced that as they get things fixed when im not there

at a mates house once one of the decks distorted loads during spongebob but ive never had it at a venue

When ive had problems its usually one channel spluttering or making no sound at all which sounds horrible in a large venue. Clubs have got normally got spare decks but its hassle changing them mid set, same with sorting out feedback problems that sort of thing should be fixed during the soundcheck