What do you think of todays music masterings, especially on the topic of the loudness war and what are sound engineers trying to achieve with so much digital compression that they brickwall songs? Death Magnetic by Metallica is in my opinion a pretty good album musically, but the songs are brickwalled to hell through compression, but the Guitar Hero 3 versions of the songs, from the master records, sound pretty good.
What do you prefere: vinyl's or cd's, and what is the main difference between them?
EDIT: Why is there a difference between vinyl's and cd's soundwise? CD's just sound so sterile compared to vinyl's. Is there any limitations on CD's or is it just a placebo effect. Or maybe CD's and vinyl's are produced under different masterings?
Well of course, the main difference is that cd's are digital and vinly's are analog.
Cd's won the opinion of many people because there is no loss of quality after constant play of the album. With vinyl this can happen very easily. Causing there to be pops and crackles in the vinyl.
Cd's can also survive under many more conditions than vinyl can. Vinyl records will become warped if under excessive heat and stacking records on top of each other can flatten them over time. Cd's can survive all of this.
Vinyl records require excessive cleaning and care to keep them in tip top shape while Cd's only need a simple polishing to remove a scratch or two.
I'll leave the rest of your questions for others to answer.
yeah, I already knew that, it looks like I asked the wrong question. I ment to ask what is the main difference in sound, I heard alot of albums on cd's and on vinyl's but they just don't sound the same. Are vinyl's overall a better way to listen to music, it looks like there is overall more dynamic range over the cd's, when you listen to vinly's it is kind of a more lively experience. CD's just sound so sterile compared to vinyl's. Is there some limitations on the cd's or are vinyl's produced under better masterings or maybe it's more of a placebo effect?
I'd recommend cd's really. The limitations of a cd aren't near bad enough to really result in any notible decrease in quality compared to the studio versions. Vinyl records technically have a larger frequency range than what cd's are limited to, but again, it doesn't make a difference because these frequencies that are limited are beyond human hearing anyway. Most of the time, sound quality depends on the way the song was produced on either vinyl or cd.
I only recomend vinyl if your in the market for some older music because those older recordings can sound much better than their remastered analog recording to digital versions on the cd.
New cd's will mostly sound just as good as new vinyl recordings because there is no audible difference in their recordings unless the producer decides to do something different.
Asides from their differences in quality, I say cd's are always the better choice because they are hardly subject to any change compared to vinyl.