Når man er vokset op med musik fra gamle rørradioer – før FM-radio blev en selvfølge – og centnertunge transistorradioer, så kan man jo let få et afslappet forhold til lydgengivelse. Hvis musikken ikke er værd at lytte til på en gammel Blaupunkt transistor på stranden en sommerdag, så er den vel ikke værd at lytte til i det hele taget!? Eller hvad?!

Med opkomsten af digital lyd i form af CD’en startede en vild diskussion om, hvorvidt CD’en var en forbedring af vinylLPen’s lyd – eller snarere det modsatte. Diskussionen fortsætter endnu.

Mange – også unge – sværger til vinylgrammofonpladen. Jeg har selv læst og lyttet til mange tekniske forklaringer på, hvorfor den digitale lyd er en bedre og renere lyd en grammofonpladens. Og diagrammer kan være stærkt overbevisende. Men, alligevel har min personlige oplevelse alligevel været, at der var en forskel. Og jeg tænker ikke kun på den, som rilleknas og -sus, kan gøre.

Nu er jeg så faldet over Paul Mccartneys kommentar til det problem. Hvis han har ret, så har jeg en forklaring på mit problem:

We’ve been through a lot of media. We started off on vinyl — all our music was only vinyl, because nothing else was available. Then it was the tape cassette: It was kind of “Wow, that’s cool,” and so we listened to stuff on tape cassette, mainly because it was portable. The feature of that was that if we did a mix in the early days of the Beatles, we would just put one of these little Phillips tape-cassette machines on the board and get a rough idea of the song we’d just done. Going back in the van we’d play it. We didn’t put it through speakers, we weren’t that sophisticated — that came later, we did get little jacks and were able to do that. But at that time it was just great to take the mix home to Liverpool. Then you got CDs. They were sort of the new thing, and it was good to hear stuff on that. Now you have downloading, Internet. So, to me it doesn’t really matter. To me it’s the songs.

You can always go back to the original; you can always go back to the media that was intended. Some vinyl nuts will have a record player and the original vinyl records for the Beatles, and you’re hearing it as we made it. A lot of engineer friends of mine will say that’s the best way to listen to it. I was interested to hear the theory of vinyl vs. CDs. One of my engineers said we record something and the frequencies will go [makes high-pitched frequency sound] and beyond that we can’t hear, but they are on the vinyl. Similarly, the other way [makes low-pitch sound]… those frequencies that are in the bass. You can’t hear them, but they’re there in the vinyl. You can measure them on VU meters, but our ears can’t pick them up. So he said, that’s why vinyl’s better. That’s why people think of it as warmer and fuller, because it actually is. Whereas a CD, if you go [makes high-pitched sound again] the CD doesn’t need any information above that, so it goes to whatever it is — 5,000 KH — and cuts off. Similarly in the bass. That’s why engineers, some of my engineers anyway, don’t think this is good. I think it’s gotten better, for one reason or another, but I’m not a great audio guy I kind of will listen on anything — to me the spirit of the song is more important. I like listening on great equipment, but I figure it’s up to people.