A little while ago, a homosexual Mexican asked me the decades old question of

"what sounds better, vinyl records or CDs?"...

...and the answer to that

(spoilers)

is:

CDs

.

Period.

 
But while that is

objectively

true, in the end, this may not even matter to you. At all.

Somehow the German tagline "wie live" reads like the English "we live" in my head, which in turn is only one step away from John Carpenter's "THEY LIVE", emphasising the inherent

creepiness

of this advertisement.
 
There was also another, later ad (I couldn't find that one, though), which showed a rock/pop concert, where the blindfolded audience excitedly cheered for a CD-player on stage.

Urrrgh

...

(This blog entry will probably lack focus and/or structure. If so, sorry about that.)
 

OK, so ... I recently had to check the

test-pressing

for the vinyl releases of the new album & EP ... and, as always, it was

frustrating

. -- But before I get into that, here are two pretty pictures...

I always listen to music via headphones. Always. It's the only way for me. When I want (slash

need

) to listen to music, I want just that ...

music

... and nothing else. I cannot tolerate any background noise, not even the sound of my own movement.

Vinyl records, however,

crackle

. Sometimes they crackle a lot.

Sometimes I don't mind this, at all. At other times, I do. A lot.
 

Having to listen to my own test-pressing usually falls into the latter category. Actually, pretty much

always

. After all, if I wanted crackle or noise in my music, I would put it there

myself

, and in exactly the right amount, too. -- Interestingly, when I listen to other people's music on vinyl, I don't really care, whether or not the record crackles. It only really drives me crazy, when it's my own music. -- Actually, that's not entirely true, because I

have

bought albums on CD that I already owned on vinyl.
 

It all just soooo depends.

When it comes to my own music, I am always worried that it doesn't sound as good as it

could

... or, in fact,  should ... and that for a

multitude

of reasons.
 
To me, having to listen to test-pressings is like ... I don't know ... it's in the name, already. Literally. It's like a test in school. You have studied all this time and now this is the "final moment", this is it. If you fuck this up, you're done. You only have this ONE chance to get it right. What, if I miss something? -- I cannot. I MUST NOT.
 
So, perhaps understandably, when I have to listen to a test-pressing, I am

NOT

relaxed. At all. I am tense. I am anxious. I am worried...
 
...and then I put on my headphones, and the first thing I hear is that gawd-damn fucking crackling. Something that

should not

be there. It's not part of my recording!

And, yes ... I

know

... it even says so on the sleeve of every single test-pressing you receive:
 

"Minor pops and slight crackling as well as a certain amount of background noise cannot be avoided with analogue media such as vinyl records and are therefore no press defects."

But then my mind races on and wonders how much noise EXACTLY is still considered "normal", how much of this I do have to tolerate, and at what point EXACTLY (and I do mean

exactly

) does it become an inferior pressing? -- Urrrgh, it's just stressful.

I don't know how other people do it, but this is how I check my test-pressings:
 

First of all, you need at least

THREE

records. (Well, I do.)

 
I sit down with a notepad on my lap, a stopwatch in my left hand and a pen in my right ... and as I listen to the first record, I write down the times of

EVERY SINGLE NOISE & CRACKLE

that sounds

suspicious

to me. -- EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. -- Sometimes this list is longer, at other times it's shorter.
 

(Of course, I also listen to the overall quality of the sound, check that the tracks are on the correct side, and that the record plays with the correct speed and has the correct catalog-number. I mean, obviously.)

 
Then I listen to the second record. This time I

compare

my list to the noise I hear. If the noise I spot on this second record

doesn't

match with my list ... GREAT ... then all is cool and I am done with it. -- However, if something

does

match, then I (start worrying and) will have to listen to the third record as well.
 
If the noise on the third records

doesn't

match up with my list, then I can breath a sigh of relief (because the matching crackle on the second record was clearly just a coincidence), and I will give the pressing plant the "OK" to go ahead with the production. -- But if it

does

match again, then I will need to send them a detailed list of my findings and have them re-examine everything.
 
Sometimes they come to the same result as I and have to redo the entire process with new tools and new test-pressings ... at other times, they don't.

One

of the reasons why I am always worried that my music might not sound as good as it perhaps could is because I do not own any "High End" equipment. It's not that what I work with is utter crap. But it's also not super expensive either. It's simply ... well ... it's an

ordinary consumer grade hifi-system

.
 
 
 
So, naturally, one of my worries is that I cannot hear every single miniscule thing that goes on ... and that therefore I am not able to tweak and tickle everything to perfection (within reason, that is ... after all, it's still SOPOR-music, so there will be limits by default), and that it therefore ... well ...

lacks

.

But recently something happened that pretty much cured me of those worries (at least for now):

 
As I mentioned in the

about the "Magical Beauty of physical Media", I am currently really enjoying listening to CDs on my old, portable CD-player. However, since it's that old of a device (and also in the spirit of better having a back-up of everything), I thought that I should perhaps get another one. Something new.
 
I opted for the

FiiO DM13

, which had really good (though probably paid for) reviews and currently sells for about a hefty 170 EUR. It also claims to have this really good, basically "high end" digital/analogue converter that one usually only finds in portable players above 300 EUR. I mean, it

literally

said so in its own manual. So, I guess, it

has

to be true, right?
 
But I ended up

returning

this supposedly posh player the following day, because that piece of trash started skipping my CDs after a while. And I am not talking about burned CD-Rs either. Nope, regular CDs that played perfectly fine in my old player. I thought:

"Seriously? Are you fucking kidding me?!"

 
However, the FiiO DM13

did

sound "clearer" than the CD-player in my hifi-system, and I

did

notice things that I had never heard this pronounced before. -- But, here is the thing:

I did not like what I heard.

At first, I couldn't understand why I did not enjoy the music that I was listening to. After all, the sound was noticeably clearer than ever before. So why? And then I realised that this was exactly the problem:

I just did NOT like this sound

.

This led me to believe that my realisation can probably be applied to the entire world of "HighEnd" audio, in that it may

certainly

sound

differently

and is

objectively

"better", too ...
 

...  

but it may not necessarily sound better to

me

.

 
This partially put my mind at ease, and now I worry a

little

less. I will simply keep doing things as well and with as much care as I possibly can, just like I have always done. That will have to be good enough. Besides, in the end, I have no control over

how

other people will hear it, anyway... - as in on what system, what ears, what brain...
 

So,

it's all good

.

So, what sounds better now,

CDs

or

vinyl records

???
 

Well, the correct answer to this is ... that it's a silly question to begin with. After all, you are basically comparing apples to oranges here, as these are two entirely different mediums, two different experiences, each with their own characteristics and their own pros and cons.
 
Yes, the music on a CD sounds

exactly

like the music was/is "meant" to sound (well, ideally), and it's definitely more convenient, too. Just pop it in your player and enjoy. A vinyl record, on the other hand, needs to be "cleaned" (well,

brushed

) before each play, and it obviously requires more storage space. But it also comes with this big, beautiful artwork, which is just a joy in itself.
 
As for myself, I'll keep doing the same thing as before: sometimes I will buy a record, sometimes I will order a CD, and at other times a simple download will do just fine. It just so ...

depends

.

At some point in the 80s (I think it was in 1985, but I could be totally wrong) I saw this two-page advertisment for Philips' new CD-player that was made to look like a magazine article ... of a bunch of trashy lovers of classical music, listening to what they believed was a live performance, when in fact they were listening to a CD-recording. They couldn't tell the difference, because - guess what - the CD sounded just like the real thing. No crackle, no tape hiss, no distortion. Just the perfect reproduction of the original performance.

Post Scriptum

Post Post Scriptum

In the end, I did

not

buy a new (as in "current"), portable CD-player after all. Instead, I painted mother's ugly, old player from the late 90s/early 2000s. It still works fine, and it even plays mp3-discs. I kinda fucked it up, though, because

I cannot paint for shit

. It's

supposed

to look like the

HALLOWEEN III

pumpkin.
 
Oh, well ...

Anyway, the whole point of this pointless-as-usual blog entry was merely to say that the

test-pressings

for the album and EP have arrived, and that they

sound fine

.