Red Hot Chili Peppers vinyl sounds better than CD

A comparison of the sound of the CD and vinyl releases of the latest RHCP album.

The differences you can hear are choices made by the mastering engineers, NOT a result of the different formats.

For more information, go to

http://productionadvice.co.uk/rhcp-vinyl-cd

Category:

Music

Tags:

• RHCP
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Loudness War
• CD
• vinyl
• sound
• quality
• dynamic range
• crest factor

[lucadepu]

am i wrong? cd's got less dynamic range because of the digital audio compromises ( compression / fromat encoding?)

[masteringmedia]

@lucadepu No - CD is technically capable of greater dynamic range than vinyl.

[slider2699]

So, why do artists let this happen? A band like RHCP, who are talented musicians, let their work be hidden by bad mastering. Yet they go to the effort to have a vinyl version released. I've heard the vinyl of IWY and Stadium Arcadium, and they sound like different records than the CDs. Then kids buy Beats headphones to compensate. A good vinyl rip and my $40 PortaPros sounds way better than a CD and Beats. The young will never fully hear the artists' vision at this rate.

[masteringmedia]

@slider2699 I think the band defer to "experts" - in this case, Rick Rubin and his engineers, probably. They think that people prefer heavily compressed music.

Sadly, when it gets to these extremes at least, the "experts" are wrong :

productionadvice.co.uk/researc­h-loudness-sales/

[jamjam92189]

@lucadepu no its because of how it was mastered cd has more dynamic range and should be used for more dynamic sounding songs

[Boshunz]

wow. I definately preffer to have my ears blasted when the drums first come in.I definately see how the build up of the song in the beginning makes you want that CRASH of drums.... but on the cd version the volume of the drums almost remains the same, although in real life if chad was playing this live the drums would be much louder. The cd vrsn isn't up there with the vinyl version. It's the drums that get the song going. Especially on this track. oh well.... the ppeppers sound good either way.

[geonerd]

God, that's just brutal!

[amoergosum3]

Stop The Loudness War!

[LandyGerhardt]

@slider2699 The Vinyl was mastered by a kind of new kid to the mastering scene who has skills. The CD was mastered by this complete moron named "Vlado Meller" who has been mastering since mono tape but still has no education in the subject. He also destroyed the white stripes vinyl records, but they are over rated anyway.

[GerSHAK]

The vinyl version is still a victim of the loudness war and much less dynamic than the mastermix has to have been. It doesn't compare at all to the awesomeness that was the Stadium Arcadium vinyl. Still at least a bit nicer than the CD.

[masteringmedia]

@lucadepu

c) They saw the negative reaction to the original and decided to put it right

Personally I think (a) is the most likely explanation...

[masteringmedia]

@lucadepu In fact the same studio AND engineer mastered both these versions ! I can think of a few possibilities about why they sound different:

a) Whoever wanted the CD to be "as loud as possible" didn't oversee the vinyl release, or didn't care as much what the CD sounded like

b) They deliberately want the vinyl to sound better, because the market has "audiophile" expectations of the format, or to persuade people to buy multiple versions or...