Several years ago I overdid it with a valuable record, resulting in a tiny gap between the spindle and the vinyl. My first thought was “oh no, I’ve ruined it,” but I’m not so sure now, especially considering players like the Roksan Xerxes, where the spindle is designed to be removed during play.
I’ve no idea if it matters one way or the other with the LP12, and I’m not inclined to do an exhaustive comparison with two copies of the same record.
It’s always a risk isn’t it! I’ve never overdone it, preferring to do it in tiny stages until the record fits properly.
You have promoted the fact that vinyl isn’t as good as CD’s, you have promoted that your CD’s are still perfect, you have promoted that your CD’s combined with a Naim system are as good as you hear at a concert.
Now you have CD’s being scratched by cardboard?
Let’s be honest your posts are just vinyl bashing nothing more. If you wanted to get in with the music industry sending out media in substandard packaging your first post could have been something like this;
"Moved from vinyl to CD back in the 80’s as I was fed up with the pops and crackles from vinyl and CD was silent when playing. My CD player combined with a Naim setup gives me a sound that makes me feel as though I am actually there, it’s awesome.
But I have noticed that CD’s are now in cardboard sleeves, this adds dust to the media and oils from your skin when you try and get the CD out of the case. Not helpful."
But you didn’t you just banged on about how poor vinyl is and how brilliant CD’s are.
We are talking about two different things.
Poor packaging risks damaging the support. Actually it has not yet damaged any of my CDs but it is a poor penny pinching move, that risks scratching a CD.
I just believe that vinyl is an obsolete outdated support. The sound quality of a CD is technically and sonically superior. I do not need to carefully set up a player, fiddling with weighs and adjustments to optimise the tonearm. I just feed my CD into the player and press play.
The vinyl LP is easily damaged, wears out with repeated plays, and often arrives warped or with some other defects, as other posts above illustrate. Taking 1 in 10 records back to the shop, is something I thought had ended in 1980. I have never bought a defective CD. I can confidently buy them via internet from anywhere in the world, and be confident of getting a playable disc. I would never chance buying vinyl second hand.
Vinyl deserves to be bashed. But I am not bashing out of prejudice. I was just glad be be done with these objects, when digital offered a much better technologically superior alternative. I was sick and tired of buying poor quality, pre warped records.
This morning I played the Survivors Suite by Jarret. A disc recorded in 1977. I have a vinyl copy I bought in 1978. I can hear detail on the CD, that I never heard on the original. ECM did a good remastering job. It sounds very nice on my system. I also played the recent “London Brew”. It sounds a bit better, because recording and mastering technique has improved. I do not hear the sharpness often attributed to digital recordings. I just hear finer detailed, noise free music.
For professional reasons, I have been to very many Classical and Jazz concerts. My present CD set up is the closest I have got to the real thing.
Well that just goes to show…’we all hear things differently’
I have a friend who comes round regularly for an evening of listening to music. He gave up on vinyl in the 90’s because it became impossible to buy certain titles. That is the reason I invested more on CD replay, ultimately reaching CDS3 level. For a while the CDS3 was the equal of my original, 1991 vintage, Xerxes. When the Xerxes developed a problem in 2010, I upgraded to the Xerxes 20+, which is significantly better than the very capable CDS3.
Back to my friend. Without fail, at the end of the evening he will say how he really regrets selling his turntable and vinyl collection. He also says he can’t believe how modern cartridges have reduced surface noise.
You have a preference for CD replay and I have no issue with that, each to their own. I prefer vinyl and don’t appreciate the bashing of, IMO, a superior sounding medium. It’s not perfect, just like CD isn’t, but I prefer it.
Anyway, I’m bored with you now so my input on this thread will cease.
As someone who works in the industry, I can tell you that the jewel case is – and always has been – very unpopular with consumers. It scratches or breaks, hinges and teeth on trays snap and it is very space-inefficient compared to the size of the actual disc (500 CDs in jewel cases takes up a lot of room).
It, and the “long box” packaging found on a lot of American CDs in the early days of the format, was largely driven by the powerful US and UK retailers, not especially by the record companies. The plastic jewel cases are made of is also environmentally wasteful and is difficult to recycle. Not a good look in 2024.
So moving to digipaks and other plastic-free or low-impact packaging materials is a bit of a no-brainer, even if – ironically, given your assertions about cost-cutting and penny-pinching – they are often more expensive than jewel cases. Digipaks aren’t really the result of cost-cutting by record companies.
If you’re concerned about scratching CDs, you can buy little polythene “inner sleeves” quite easily and cheaply; many Japanese releases include them as a matter of course.
Personally, I like a digipak (never keen on the plastic cases for the reasons Kev posted above) …because a digipak more closely replicates an LP cover (the Led Zep CD series spring to mind).
Yes those thin plastic sleeves are excellent. Great to protect your cd’s with the ‘thick cardboard page with slots’ type as seen with many box sets.
Both vinyl and CD formats are outdated, streaming is the ‘In’ format, but both vinyl and CD are enjoyed by many.
CD sound is superior - Based on what? CD is different yes but superior no.
I have vinyl from 1970 that plays just fine, I have second hand vinyl that plays just fine, I have returned only about half a dozen LP’s in 50 years of collecting. I have bought a few defective CD’s - no manufacturing process is perfect.
Vinyl does not deserve to be bashed, it has provided for many decades and continues to provide a source of music in a format loved by millions around the world.
I have CD and Vinyl version of some albums, I enjoy playing both formats, just depends on my mood.
I too have been to many a concert over the years, I have live albums of concerts, some that I attended, the recorded version always lacks one thing - the actual atmosphere of being there, yes a good setup can bring your listening up to a high level but it cannot replicate the feeling you get of being there.
In summary you are a vinyl basher, nothing more, you love your CD’s and your CD playing setup, I have absolutely no qualm with that, the fact that you enjoy music is fine by me, the method that you choose is fine by me.
You should be more respectful of how others choose to enjoy their music, CD’s are but one of many media formats, all that matters is that we enjoy what we hear from the speakers of our systems.
You can and they work very well.
I think only good thing to do with a CD
Is make bird scares out of them,
Opps wrong thread off to the garden one 
Vinly rules ok 
Haha, don’t let the CD gang hear this
Indisputably greater dynamic range when mastered properly. Ditto frequency range and noise floor. Recycled vinyl is dismal. The DR and FR of the tracks closest to the label of a vinyl record are reduced compared to the outer. `The use of RIAA curves is arguably a massive and poorly implemented compromise and so on and so forth. Thirty years worth of weekly music rags in which artists complained that vinyl was a dismal reflection of what they’d actually recorded (go read Rocks Back Pages) but now only vinyl is authentic and magic and blardy blah.
Not to me it isn’t, you can throw test results at me from now until doomsday it doesn’t matter, for me vinyl rules, I like the sound that I get from vinyl, it is my preferred media for listening, put some vinyl on, feet up, and relax.
No doubt my views will incur comment along the lines of luddite or blinkered or just plain stupid, that’s okay I can live with that.
People bang on about how much better CD is in range and all kinds of other stuff but it is meaningless, I just prefer vinyl, I like what I hear from vinyl and that is all that matters for me.
Yes I do play CD’s, I have music on CD that I don’t have on vinyl, yes I do stream music, I don’t dislike the music that I listen to on digital media but for whatever reason I just don’t find it as engaging as I do vinyl. What is the difference? I don’t know, all I know is that it is different and IMHO not as good as vinyl.
For me when I really want to sit back and listen to music it is vinyl that I play, it is the format that gives the most to me. Sorry.
Others may like CD’s or streaming more than vinyl, that’s fine, I really am not bothered by someone else’s primary choice of musical source, what works for them is good for them.
As well as what you outlined, and to return to the original question.
Even if we agree to disagree about the SQ superiority of the CD over vinyl, it looks like the problems of the records being sold now, go well beyond inner sleeves. All the old problems of the past are still here, probably worse, as a lot of the old skilled pressing technicians have long since became pensioners, and I wonder how many the old skills and tricks of the trade have been passed on. Having to return one in ten records is a pretty dismal reflection on record company quality control.
My local record shop, mostly sells Jazz and Classical, I am on good terms with the owner, and we often chat about music, and sometimes about the resurgence of vinyl. He is very selective about the labels stocked, for reasons of quality control (returns are a pain in the butt for retailers) and more interestingly he hinted that some record labels just cheaply master directly from a CD, with little care given to sound quality I presume.
One very positive aspect of the vinyl resurgence is that it has given a new lease of life to many record shops. I read in the Guardian that there are even new record shops opening in th UK.
Here are some quotes copied and pasted from above.
I’m more concerned with the 2/3 of new discs that are dished, wildly off centre, or have unforgivable pressing defects like shallow groove, where the lathe barely made a cut into the mould and the resulting pressings look semi blank and sound rubbish.
I can live with supplying my own sleeves.
Then I go to into a record store that specialises in only really top notch new pressings. And it’s all bloody classical and jazz - there’s nothing for me to buy at all.
I buy quite a lot of new vinyl still, as many of you know, mostly pressed by RTI, QRP, RI, Optimal, Pallas and GZ, and at worst my reject rate is around 1 in 10, but usually less. Recently it has been very good with no need for any returns for quite some time. For all that, I think that an anti-static lined inner sleeve should be a given from everybody.
And at the prices charged for contemporary releases there must be good margins for a circa £30 record v a £7 to £9 CD for the record companies
Either way I haven’t bought much vinyl lately as I’m tired and disappointed of getting (80%) warped recorded with one end of the frequency spectrum or the other largely absent. If I do think I might want something I scan here and discogs to see if there’s any comments on SQ first.
PS I am not a basher, hater, eccetera. Sometimes I just do not understand certain aspects of in this case audio.
I listen to a lot of music on headphones (my wife hates jazz) . Different cans (I quess speakers are the same), can make the music we are playing sound very different (I was surprised how different). My Sennheiser HD800S headphones are very neutral, detailed and do not emphasise bass. My Beyerdynamic Amiron headphones are less detailed, and have a much warmer sound and are probably technically inferior. But the Amiron’s are far more relaxing, the HD800S headphones are more realistic.
My new Naim amp with PMC speakers, sounds very different (much nicer), to my old Hegal amp with Celestion speakers.
My point is that our HiFi gear can have a big impact on the SQ, or more precisely, the enjoyment of the music we are playing.
Yes but that’s the point isn’t it. If you prefer vinyl then good for you. That’s not what you said though. You asserted that
There is no technical basis for that at all. On technicalities CD is superior. Played on the right kit it can demonstrate that. Nevertheless ultimately what we like is a preference. Asserting CD is not superior is by inference a statement that vinyl is superior. No it isn’t. You just happen to like it.
I used to like vinyl. Then I liked CD. Now I like streaming. The differences between them are largely a sliver and a preference.
A friend of a friend once shared a flat with the brother of a guy who worked in the music industry and he said that CD’s are are the greatest and that vinyl records are rubbish. So there, put that in your pipe and smoke it vinyl junkies!!