Sound Quality Difference Between Vinyl And Digital

A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings.

Sound quality difference between vinyl and digital.

The quality of a digital reproduction is dictated by how many of those samples of the original are made. It is easy to be carried away with the marvels and speed of advance of digital mediums. 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. Observation and comments on the difference between analogue vinyl and digital formats.

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. Since vinyl is an analog format it can suffer from the same problems. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup.

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. 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. Take a look at the graph below. To break down what vinyl can.

Writing for the wall street journal neil shah reported in his article why vinyl s boom is over that. With the rise of digital music cds included it s possible to make a track sound louder than it naturally should. 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.

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. That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings. Original sound is analog by definition. Old lps were cut from analog tapes that s why they sound so high quality.

The results may surprise you as they did us. Check out our listening results. The sound wave produced by analog playback could be further from the original than a good quality digital file would be. See our youtube debate.

It caused songs to sound distorted and unpleasant and removed their depth and texture. The problem here is that it had a tremendous result on the audio quality. Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy.