Sound Quality Difference Between Vinyl And Digital

Digital music as source for vinyl.

Sound quality difference between vinyl and digital.

The comparison of sound quality between vinyl records and digital recordings stands tall among these platform debates. Check out our listening results. 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. 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.

A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. With the rise of digital music cds included it s possible to make a track sound louder than it naturally should. 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. The quality of a digital reproduction is dictated by how many of those samples of the original are made.

The problem here is that it had a tremendous result on the audio quality. 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. 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. Old lps were cut from analog tapes that s why they sound so high quality.

It is easy to be carried away with the marvels and speed of advance of digital mediums. Sound quality depends on a lot of factors and it is impossible to. There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often. Original sound is analog by definition.

Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy. To break down what vinyl can. 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. Since vinyl is an analog format it can suffer from the same problems.

That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings. See our youtube debate. Observation and comments on the difference between analogue vinyl and digital formats. Writing for the wall street journal neil shah reported in his article why vinyl s boom is over that.

Take a look at the graph below. The results may surprise you as they did us. We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup.