It’s nice to see compressed file formats getting a comparison every now and then, and even better when it’s in the mainstream press:

Rolling Stone : Alternate Takes: The MP3 Challenge

The author puts a 128kbps MP3 file up against vinyl.  And of course, after listening for a bit, the vinyl version won out.  While it’s no secret to a lot of music listeners and collectors, it might just wake up the rest of the iPod generation to the fact that digitally compressed music isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Carrying thousands of songs around in a single device certainly is convenient, but you do need to make a sacrifice.  At least there is a bright side: you can carry fewer tunes around if you use a lossless format, but in a disk-based system like the iPod, battery life suffers and storage space is not used as efficiently.  Still, to hear the music unaltered is well worth it.  And even if you have the CD equivalent, or better yet a vinyl version at home, you still have something to fall back on.

Even better, read this recent post by Steve Hoffman on his forum, where he compared a vinyl acetate cutting to CD, SACD and a 15ips open reel tape copy of the master tape.   How did the vinyl fare?  Not bad for a 100 year old format!  Steve explains it better than I ever could.  Even having said that, I still hear “something” on CDs that isn’t there on the LP, including a bit of listener fatigue after a few hours, which I never got with vinyl.  I’ll hang onto my records for quite awhile, thank you…