Sound Quality Difference Between Vinyl And Digital

Observation and comments on the difference between analogue vinyl and digital formats.

Sound quality difference between vinyl and digital. There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often. But the majority of today s new and re issued vinyl albums around 80 or more several experts estimate start from digital files even lower quality cds. It is why mp3 with relatively few samples is so poor and hi res audio with far more is the closest we have to a studio recording. It caused songs to sound distorted and unpleasant and removed their depth and texture.

See our youtube debate. Digital music as source for vinyl. The comparison of sound quality between vinyl records and digital recordings stands tall among these platform debates. Nearly all audio enthusiasts take one side or the other some openly and with zeal most with subtlety and qualifying their preference through acknowledgements of the pros and cons of each.

Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy. Since vinyl is an analog format it can suffer from the same problems. We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup. Writing for the wall street journal neil shah reported in his article why vinyl s boom is over that.

The problem here is that it had a tremendous result on the audio quality. The sound wave produced by analog playback could be further from the original than a good quality digital file would be. Check out our listening results. Take a look at the graph below.

With the rise of digital music cds included it s possible to make a track sound louder than it naturally should. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. Vinyl can still push music to the limits of its dynamic range 55 70db but it often shies away from doing so in order to maintain sound quality. Sound quality depends on a lot of factors and it is impossible to.

A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. Original sound is analog by definition. The results may surprise you as they did us. It is easy to be carried away with the marvels and speed of advance of digital mediums.

That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings. Old lps were cut from analog tapes that s why they sound so high quality. To break down what vinyl can.