Do LPs rip better than CDs?
An interesting comment on CDs, MP3s and LPs from reader John Cooper:
Buying a used CD is a great option, not just because of the price, but because it represents a great backup solution. If something happens to your MP3 file, you can choose to make another at even higher quality.
I think you’re absolutely correct that files that use some sort of lossless protocol will eclipse MP3s within a few years. Disk storage is becoming so inexpensive that even those who are satisfied with the sound quality at 128 bps won’t mind the additional space it takes to store a lossless file.
I started encoding at 192 bps a couple of years ago. But a few months ago, I started using 256 bps for files I rip from CDs and 320 bps for files I rip from my LPs. Here’s a surprise: files ripped from LPs sound way better than files ripped from CDs, even at exactly the same bit rate. I don’t know the correct audio terms, but they are brighter and punchier. It makes me eager to create MP3s for all the good music I have on LP, even if I already have the same music on CD. If you’ve still got a turntable and an old amplifier–my amp dates to 1977 and my turntable to 1984–it’s easy to make MP3s with the free Audacity program for Windows; it’s just time-consuming. (It’s even easier on a Mac, but I’m between Macs now.)
I’m hardly an audiophile. I do half my listening via iPod through headphones, forty percent via iPod (or CD) through a Cambridge Soundworks table radio, and the other ten percent via iPod through a home theater setup that includes cheap in-wall speakers that came with the house. I switched to 192 bps when I found I could tell the difference on earbuds or small speakers. I switched to 320 bps mainly because I knew I probably wouldn’t bother ever making new files from my LPs due to the time factor.
That said, I can remember when I stopped buying LPs and started buying CDs, occasionally of the same music. Although I was impressed by the perfect clarity of the CD sound–no background hum or hiss, no pops at all–I was often disappointed by a comparitively lifeless aspect that I couldn’t put my finger on. It was particularly apparent when the recording featured a solo acoustic guitar. When I played the LP, the guitar sounded like it was being played in the same room. On CD, it sounded like–a recording of a guitar.
CDs got better, but they still don’t have that snap. When I listen to the 320 bps files I made myself from the LPs, they’ve got most of it back.
2 Comments so far
Leave a reply
Converting analog music to digital isn’t really “ripping.” It’s essentially adding another “master” layer to the music. Your commentator’s amplifier is adding a certain amount of “color” to the audio signal, and that’s being captured in the recording (”LP ripping”) process. If he were to play a CD through the same equipment, and record it in the same way, he’d probably find that sound to be superior to straight CD ripping, as well.
That’s an interesting theory, Shawno, and I don’t dismiss it out of hand. However, I’m skeptical that somehow my 1977 bottom-of-the-product line amp/receiver is adding life to music where it isn’t really there. And I think that even now–twenty-plus years into large-scale manufacturing of commercial audio CDs–either CDs aren’t being mastered as well as they should be, or there are limitations to the CD audio schema that prevent them from reproducing at least some kinds of sound with the same exciting verisimilitude as an LP. When I’ve bought CDs of music I’m already well familiar with from LP, I find that the LP usually sounds better in some ways. And when I transfer that music to a CD, the quality is largely preserved. Are CD mastering technicians so incompetent that they can’t create CDs that sound as good as the ones I make myself?