Neil Young disses the CD medium in USA Today (1 Viewer)

[Ryan Spaight]

Keith,

Good points. A turntable upgrade is something I'm considering -- I'm currently using whatever awful thing came with the JVC rack system I got back in 1984! I'm also thinking about a lower-end Music Hall table, which I hear good things about. Let us know how you like it if you end up getting one. My LP collection is small next to my CDs, but I still pick up the occasional flea market bargain. (Absolutely mint copy of Beat Crazy by Joe Jackson -- currently OOP on CD -- a couple weeks ago for $3.)

Happy 6000th post, by the way.

Ryan

 

[Jack Gilvey]

I don't recall the last time I heard a $100 'table, so a cheap CD may sound better in certain ways. Once you get to something like the Music Hall MMF-5, or maybe even the MMF-2, you begin leaving behind what "redbook" digital is capable of. By which I mean it "sounds better", which is the only standard I tend to use. I think the standard "objective measures" don't really convey what sounds better means, though.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Friends,
My top 3 formats for resolution:
1. Good vinyl on a high end turntable (expensive!)
2. Super Audio when done right (not so expensive)
3. XRCD2 from JVC (no expensive considering quality)
Ryan is right, the vast majority of CD recordings compress the life out of the music, but at a sampling rate of 44.1, we should not expect to hear the proper tone of the instruments.
New advancements in vinyl and lathes and the entire analog chain still sound the best to me when one uses a $2K plus turntable. I have even done side-by-side comparisons between a Sony SCD-1 SACD player and a VPI TNT turntable. The TNT won slightly! And you know how much I like Super Audio!
Digital can be great and it is less expensive and much more convenient.

Lee

 

[Frank_S]

Jack said, Quote
"I don't recall the last time I heard a $100 T'table, so a cheap CD may sound better in certain ways. Once you get to something like the Music Hall MMF-5, or maybe even the MMF-2, you begin leaving behind what "redbook" digital is capable of."
I agree that a cheap CD player can outperform a cheap($100)
turntable rig but when you start spending around $1k, that's where CD is left behind, IMO. My Rega P3 with Clearaudio cart. bested my Cary CD player($3K), so much so that I sold the Cary, got full credit toward upgrading my speakers.
Now I have a Koetsu cart. on the same deck and am absolutely blown away by its performance.
Luke said, Quote
"Don't get me wrong, I buy vinyl when the artist is someone I care about like Neil, but let's face it, vinyl is less than 1% of the commercial market for the music business these days and I frankly don't see it surviving the coming decade. It's not something I like to admit, but face it, the LP is basically a dying breed!"
There were more tables sold last year than the previous year ,in fact TT sales have been improving over the past 5 years and there are more manufacturers getting involved because they see the opportunity to make money. LP sales are also growing as are the many audiophile re-issues. I seriously doubt that the LP will be obsolete in my lifetime.
Ryan said, Quote
"The great irony is that CD is far, far more dynamic than vinyl, but you'd never know it from the typical hyper-compressed mastering job. A well-mastered CD will beat vinyl in every objective measure (except perhaps high-end frequency response, due to the brick wall filter on CD), and in every subjective measure except on the highest-end equipment. Unfortunately, there aren't many well-mastered CDs. "
On paper CD may show that it is capable of being "more dynamic" but I've yet to actually hear this phenomenum.
Measurements, graphs, and the like are always used to show digital's superiority but most redbook CD's fail to complement these measurements with superior sonics. I'll put my best mastered CD up against its analog counterpart anyday, the old, soon to be obsolete piece of vinyl wins, at least on my system. Enjoy the music, that's my feeling and whatever it takes to allow this to happen, go for it, whether its CD, vinyl, SACD, or DVD-A. In the end, that's really all we care about, the music.

 

[Vic_T]

I guess Neil should be hiring better engineers if he doesn't like the sound of his CDs. Gotta love the guy, though.

 

[Brian Perry]

Keith,
When you first called CD a "compromised" format, I let it pass because I figured you were referring to digital audio's limitations in resolving the finest nuances in music. However, your later statement that CD could have been 20-bits from the get-go in 1982 needs to be corrected.
16 bits was a HUGE deal in 1982. The initial specs called for 14-bit quantization but it was determined that 16 bits would be required for high-fidelity. Even if 18 or 20 bits were possible at that time, there were practical considerations for the disc size. CDs would not have taken off had the discs been the size of laserdiscs.
I think Neil and all the vinyl diehards need to admit that the CD sparked a renaissance in the music business. Sales of LPs were dying -- that is a fact. To call CDs a ripoff is just ridiculous. Ironically, the quality of vinyl is probably better now due to the fact that manufacturers don't have to dumb down their pressings by 20% to accommodate people with cheap turntables.
I personally think the invention of the Compact Disc is one of the greatest of our generation. Is it perfect? No, but I think it's safe to say that for 99%+ of the public, including those of us with $15,000+ systems, CD quality can be good enough to never long for a replacement.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

Measurements, graphs, and the like are always used to show digital's superiority but most redbook CD's fail to complement these measurements with superior sonics.

I think it's important to distinguish between "more accurate" and "sounds better." CDs will always be more accurate than vinyl, given the same source material (that is, the same master). Frequency response (except above 22Khz), channel separation, S/N, dynamic range, wow and flutter, under all objective measures CD will simply crush an LP, end of discussion.

That doesn't mean that CD "sounds better." As I said above, the inaccuracies of LP are by and large pleasing to the ear. We hear CDs as "cold" or "sterile" or "analytical" or "bright" or "fatiguing", while LPs are "warm" or "natural" or "engaging" or "sweet".

It's the same deal with tube amps. Tube amps have horrific distortion levels, but people love the way they sound. Warm, sweet, etc., etc..

I'm sure some research has been done on this fascinating topic, but I've never seen any of it. For example, is it because we're used to the sound of LPs? I doubt it, since many people who didn't grow up with LPs still like them better.

I suspect there's some sort of psychoacoustics that make the LP sound more agreeable to so many. It sure isn't technical accuracy, so I'd love to know more about what it is. (Other than some quasi-new-age mystobabble about how LPs capture music's "pure essence" or whatever.)

Ryan

 

[Jack Gilvey]

Yeah, it's tough to define "accuracy". I just go with "sounds better", since I listen to music for pleasure.

Of course, by just about any objective measure, the first CD players from 1981 (?) were more "accurate" than even today's multi-thousand-dollar turntables, so I think we're really missing something by thinking we know what "accurate" is. I think that we'll eventually realize how truly "innacurate" cd really was, but as of right now I can't see what we've missed.

And, as has been stated, cd is "good enough" for most. And SACD, considered "highly accurate", is frequently compared to good vinyl, and not to cd. Does SACD emulate vinyl's "innacuracies"?

I sometimes wonder how someone striving for "accuracy" would be able to choose components without someone else telling them which one is "accurate". Without a review or graph, might they just choose the one that "sounds better", or gives them more pleasure (if that's why they listen to music, it seems this is not always the case)?

 

[Larry Seno Jr.]

It's unrealistic for any of you to expect that people are going to spend $2000 on a record player. Period. I too lust after a Rega Turntable, but it wont happen. There are a LOT better uses for your thousands of dollars, because the risk/reward says that DVD-A and SACD are VERY close in quality to the highest level of Vinyl, and they don't suffer all the inadequacies of Vinyl, such as the inability to change songs on the fly, skip songs, Vinyl must be babied, and both suffer from a lack of selection (DVD-A and SACD MUCH more than Vinyl. God try finding ANYTHING good on DVD-A or SACD if you have taste other than old man tastes)

 

[Charles Gurganus]

Why is calling CD's a ripoff ridiculous? Do you like paying $15 for a product that cost a couple of dollars to produce, THEN, a few years later, they come out with a REMASTERED version of the same CD? Bunch of money grabbers.

 

[Marc Colella]

God try finding ANYTHING good on DVD-A or SACD if you have taste other than old man tastes)

One of the reasons why there aren't more current mainstream material on DVD-A and SACD, is for the most part - the music in the last 15-20 years have been poorly recorded.

DVD-A and SACD won't offer much of an improvement to poorly recorded material.

Generally speaking, the music nowadays is put together with machines instead of instruments, and they're recorded at too high a level. Everything is so compressed it doesn't even sound like music anymore.

 

[Samuel Des]

I heard ole Neil put her down...

 

[DonaldB]

I've always liked "Southern Man" a HELL of a lot more than "Sweet Home Alabama."

 

[Ryan Spaight]

As a sign of the kind of guy Neil is, right after Skynyrd's plane went down Neil played "Sweet Home Alabama" at one of his shows in tribute.

Ryan

 

[Jeff Keene]

Why is calling CD's a ripoff ridiculous? Do you like paying $15 for a product that cost a couple of dollars to produce, THEN, a few years later, they come out with a REMASTERED version of the same CD? Bunch of money grabbers.

Respectfully, this is just plain wrong. CD's cost much more than this to produce. In fact, I've often read that they need to sell over 300,000 units just to break even on a given release.

Not only that, but the "popular" releases have to sell much more than that to cover the costs of those that will not sell nearly that many.

The costs include recruiting acts, recording, engineering, promotion, packaging... the list goes on and on. And that's before a store that has to keep a semi-complete inventory for which they've paid shipping costs pays their heating bill. The fact that at the end of all the fixed cost the cost per unit to manufacture the disc is about a dollar is irrelevant. The price of CD's has gone up maybe 3-4 bucks since their debut almost 20 years ago. It's cheaper than two movie tickets. I just don't get the "CD's are too expensive" arguement.

Now, if you want to argue that the current CD distribution model is outdated, and that an Internet-delivered, shareware-model system of distribution could be better, cheaper, faster, etc. I'd love to hear discussion on that.

 

[Marc Colella]

I just don't get the "CD's are too expensive" arguement.

Jeff,

Explain why they physical discs cost less to produce than cassette tapes, and yet cassette tapes are half the price in stores. This was the case when CDs were first introduced, and has remained that way since.

Can you also explain how a DVD (which is only a 5 year old format, who's hardware is nowhere near as common as the CD player) with anywhere from 90 minutes to 5 hours of material sells for only a few dollars more than an audio CD?

It costs alot more to make a Hollywood film than it does a music recording. The average cost of a Hollywood film can range from $20-40 - and that's not including promotion and packaging, etc.

Obviously the studios can recooperate a nice chunk back from it's boxoffice tally, but many films lose ALOT of money. Yet these boxoffice bombs are available on DVD with a good deal of material for only a few dollars more than the price of CD.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

It costs alot more to make a Hollywood film than it does a music recording. The average cost of a Hollywood film can range from $20-40 - and that's not including promotion and packaging, etc.

Yes, but a music release doesn't have the additional revenue streams of a theatrical release, pay per view, rental, cable, and broadcast rights.

Ryan

 

[Jeff Keene]

Can you also explain how a DVD (which is only a 5 year old format, who's hardware is nowhere near as common as the CD player) with anywhere from 90 minutes to 5 hours of material sells for only a few dollars more than an audio CD?

Again, I don't know. I'd be interested to know the profit margins for each for comparison.

 

[DonMac]

Ryan Spaight wrote:

I completely agree with you - people seem to prefer a warm sound, even if it's less accurate.
What I think is a good analogy of LP vs. CD is Carnegie Hall back when it was painstakenly remodeled to have better acoustics. When it reopened, what was the public response? Almost everyone hated it! True, the Hall was more accurate acoustically, but the old configuration absorbed a lot of the high-frequencies which made music sound warmer and that was the way people liked it.
I remember reading a review of a high-end CD player from some years ago that included a "Warm Setting" switch that basically altered a CD's frequency response to be alot closer to an LP's frequency response. To me, it sounded like such a great idea that I'm actually surprised such a switch didn't catch on and become standard on all CD players!
.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

What every CD player needed to have as a standard feature from the beginning was a dynamic range "loudness" button. Something which would have made it possible to listen to all CDs sound equally loud (and awful) so that nobody would feel the need to master CDs that way today.