Sound Quality Difference Between Vinyl And Digital

The comparison of sound quality between vinyl records and digital recordings stands tall among these platform debates.

Sound quality difference between vinyl and digital.

See our youtube debate. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. The quality of a digital reproduction is dictated by how many of those samples of the original are made. To break down what vinyl can.

Original sound is analog by definition. Sonically vinyl has both strengths and weaknesses compared to digital files just as movie buffs have argued over the pros and cons of 35mm film against 4k digital. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. With the rise of digital music cds included it s possible to make a track sound louder than it naturally should.

We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup. 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. Sound quality depends on a lot of factors and it is impossible to. Digital music as source for vinyl.

It caused songs to sound distorted and unpleasant and removed their depth and texture. Since vinyl is an analog format it can suffer from the same problems. 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. Take a look at the graph below.

Check out our listening results. It is easy to be carried away with the marvels and speed of advance of digital mediums. The results may surprise you as they did us. Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy.

There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often. 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. The sound wave produced by analog playback could be further from the original than a good quality digital file would be. Writing for the wall street journal neil shah reported in his article why vinyl s boom is over that.

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. Old lps were cut from analog tapes that s why they sound so high quality. It therefore surprises some that highly respected audio experts will say a top flight record player far surpasses the sound quality of all digital sources.