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.
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.
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.
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.
This is correct, although it’s not the bass that is limited on vinyl; it’s the dynamic range compression (or ‘loudness’) in general.
I can’t believe this video is now 17 years old:
https://youtu.be/3Gmex_4hreQ
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https://piped.video/3Gmex_4hreQ
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