Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running

dantheclamman@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 692 points –
Vinyl records outsell CDs for the second year running
theverge.com
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The best explanation I've seen is that music is mixed differently for CD/streaming and vinyl.

For mass market, the move has been to mix for louder bass and similar things. The idea being that it makes the music more popular. But it also makes it difficult to appreciate anything but the bass.

On vinyl, you can't max out bass like that, it won't work on the format. So they have to give it a normal mix instead, making it sound better. In theory CDs should sound better than vinyl, but because of the music production trends, it doesn't currently.

This is correct, although it's not the bass that is limited on vinyl; it's the dynamic range compression (or 'loudness') in general.

So you have to fiddle with the volume less on vinyl?

That's the one good selling point I've heard for vinyl so far.

I like this take. it's probably also why I'm gravitating towards cassettes now, you don't need a special mix but you also can't just max the volume because magnetic media saturates and distorts quite quickly.