Title is worded a little weird, I’m not necessarily asking if there are any styles that sound better on vinyl compared to digital, are there any genres that have sounds / instruments that are harder to replicate on vinyl vs another genre?
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I like Jazz on vinyl, especially older stuff, Duke Ellington Live at Newport is a personal favorite. Also, folk/bluegrass sounds better and less “processed.” I like The Milk Carton Kids Live From Lincoln Theater. A strange flyer out there is occasional EDM. A particular album Pretty Lights A Color Map of the Sun just hits different on vinyl. And surprisingly Run The Jewels first album RTJ1 - sounds impeccable on vinyl, bass is tighter and more muted compared to the digital variants. I’m all over the place musically.
Doom metal and all subgenres
Absolutely.
no. everything will sound better on a high-bitrate digital file, with the enormous added benefit of not requiring thousands of dollars of equipment to play!
No
No.
I like my jazz on vinyl more for sure. Sound is a bit softer which is great for horns. And I have many Jazz album/artists that I can’t find streaming on most the major streaming services or some are in one and not on another. I’ll just own it and that’s it.
100% agree, so much jazz just doesnt exist digitally.
This man has thousands of jazz musics that even the original recording studios don’t have: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/story/2020-07-14/and-all-that-jazz-bram-dijkstras-invaluable-record-collection-to-be-donated-to-sdsu
Not really. There’s no genre with intended advantage. There are genres who would suffer from needle hopping because if IMD, Harmonic Distortion and Clipping from the bad mastering and mixing practices that have become the norm. Phonk or whatever that genre is, Noise and very limited, brickwalled sausage fest genres aren’t good to cut on vinyl because they won’t play well. Outside of these, vinyl is genre agnostic
A vinyl record will struggle with loud low frequency sound due to the groove width required. I would expect some issues with whatever the genre of music is that is played at the love parade (google suggests electronic dance music), large pipe organs, etc…
They’re pretty much fine if they’re cut right. Some of the best low bass I’ve heard was on vinyl, in part because it really lets the deck and feedback go wild 🙃
It’s interesting because the 80s-90s-early 2000s was filled with tons of DJs playing electronic dance music on vinyl
A lot of that wasn’t true low bass. We would have true subwoofers crossed at 80hz and mid-bass cabs going to from 80 to ~200 and those midd bass cabinets were doing most of the work.
Only songs/albums with very low bass should avoided do to the inherent limitations of the vinyl groove.
But otherwise, high *quality vinyl records can often make high quality digital sound analog.
*there are different processes to making vinyl records, some are much more audiophile worthy than others.
Yeah, disagree there. If the album is cut wrong with too narrow of a groove pitch then it could be a problem, but then it’s a mastering mistake by someone without vinyl mastering experience, not a problem with the format.
But most of the problem there is handled by the RIAA curve, which means that the amplitudes on the record are lessened in the lower frequencies, and amplified more by an RIAA preamp. Means the needle isn’t traveling as much as you’d expect even for I.e. 10Hz lows.
Try the Holst suite by the Cleveland Symphonic Winds, Telarc record. First movement, the Chaconne, the bass drum hits at the end. Fantastic realistic whole bass boom, way more depth than you’d expect and you’ll be left wondering how your needle didn’t jump the groove. It doesn’t sound better than digital per se, but vinyl is fully capable of it.
I have not found that to be the case. And proper settings on your phone preamp open the sound up. I had fifteen inch woofers and got deep and accurate bass.
Your will find much worse sound coming from early issue CDs.
I was running Bob Carver amps at the time.
How is is very low would you think?
It’s not true, vinyl will gladly play down to the single digit frequencies. Sometimes even on purpose!
Bollocks. Get a quad fold version of Paul’s Boutique / the bassiest thing you will ever hear
Opera. The singers sound like they are in the room with you. Incredible.
No. Vinyl is something you listen to because you value things unrelated to the sound quality, like it being tangible, picking a record from your collection, putting it on, listening to the entire album and so on.
I mean that’s some reasons… sound could be other reasons
If you like fairly low quality, sure. I don’t get why anyone would ever prefer vinyl for the sound. Except for maybe nostalgia.
It’s not nostalgic for me. Just the way some music sounds best on my system. I don’t have any money invested into a ‘digital chain’ or anything like that but still plug my computer into my amp sometimes
I get that part, the post was just a curious I had, nothin to do with the other aspects of vinyl.
Dub & Reggae
From an audiophile point of view, it’s a complete nightmare as, from a quality control perspective, things are often not the best vinyl wise.
That said, vinyl was and remains to be a fundamental part of the music and the sound system culture that surrounds it. All of the Jamaican music I buy now is on CD but nothing beats the sound that comes out of an old 45 when the needle drops.
I agree there are a lot of trash pressings. However there are couple of labels as Dubstore from Japan which specialize on high quality repressings of 70s/80s tunes. These mostly sound incredible.
The even more important perk about vinyl in this style of music are the tons of vinyl-only releases, especially in contemporary dub.
Most modern metal rock and pop suffer from the loudness wars, cds might have better capabilities but i prefer the mastering done on vinyl
Digitizing the vinyl on the first play with an RME a/d conventer is my routine when I buy a new record. and imo the flac files I create sound better than the digital release but not always…
I’m sure it’s purely psychological, but jazz and guitar singer/songwriter stuff (like Haley Heynderickx) sounds better to me on vinyl.
Jazz and classical often sound sterile to me on cd or streams. As imperfect as a record is, it is a more enjoyable experience for me with those genres
There’s really no reason to use vinyl in 2023. It’s well known that any modern print is from a digital master and any old release which has an original analogue recording is more accurately captured (and therefore played back) via a digital player.