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Comment by armadsen | Hacker News Reader

I got into vinyl in my teens (I'm in my mid 30s now), before the "vinyl revival" really started. I still listen to and buy it as much as I ever did, and my collection is quite large. I also listen to digital music, both streaming and stuff ripped from my CDs, downloaded from download cards that come with vinyl, and digitized directly from my LPs. There's certainly room for both. But when I put music on for the family, or want to sit down and really listen to a record, it's always on vinyl. To each their own, but this statistic itself shows that there are plenty of people who truly enjoy and find value in vinyl.

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Does vinyl work well for classical music (what I listen to mostly)? I've seen posts like the following saying that the large dynamic range isn't captured well (in particular, soft sections sound too noisy):

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/what-s-wrong-with-cla...

Curious to hear your/others' more recent/informed experience.

I’m no expert audio engineer, but the dynamic range of vinyl is limited by the space between the grooves. That being said, it shouldn’t have any effect on the quality of the audio, just the difference in volume of the loudest and softest parts.

The saturation applied to a lot of pressings (which gives vinyl its supposed warmth) usually adds weight to the low frequencies and rounds off some of the high frequencies so I can't really see that translating too well to something with such a wide dynamic range. It's far from a perfect representation of the recording.

Perfect sound quality isn't really why you should be buying vinyl - there's far too many points of failure in the signal chain from the pressing of the record, the stylus, the preamp and the speakers.

You'd be better off getting a nice soundcard and playing CDs or 24 Bit WAV/AIFF files from your laptop.

Quote by John Peel.

“Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don’t have any surface noise. I said, ‘Listen, mate, life has surface noise'”

The selection of classical music on vinyl is very poor. There's basically only stuff from prior to the CD era and that's it, so if you want a newer composition or a recent performance you won't find it on vinyl. The usual arguments in favor of vinyl don't really apply, either. There's no interesting artwork on the cover, etc. Although, sometimes there are detailed liner notes on some older vinyl releases.

Vinyl is terrible for complex classic music - orchestral. ~40db of dynamic range against nearly 100 on CD and more on SACD

People have downvoted you because you speak truth and provide facts. HN, we can do better.

I have a decent vinyl selection with a few classical pressings.

Honestly, I only really enjoy classical in ultra-hi-fi 5.1. Even better if there's a video of the orchestra. (Then again, I don't listen to classical very often.)

The thing with "classical" music is that, before the we had recorded music, when someone listened to classical they were at a live performance in a silent room, and they gave the music their full attention. The music can get loud and quiet, much more than "modern" music that we listen to while driving, while vacuuming, ect.

So, IMO, if you're doing classical with vinyl, look at the records as collector's items. But, IMO, if you're really trying to get into classical, get a nice TV and a nice surround sound system and buy (or borrow) great performances on bluray. Try to set it up in a very quiet space so you can hear music that gets quiet.

BTW: If you've ever noticed a "sparkle" to the sound at a live classical concert, you probably can hear slightly over 20khz. A good bluray recording (at 96khz) will have that "sparkle" that's just slightly above 20khz, but filtered out of CD.

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