Sound Quality Vinyl Vs Digital

Digital got its act together but not until the death of the cd.

Sound quality vinyl vs digital.

And when cds first. Sound quality depends on a lot of factors and it is impossible to definitively state that either analog or digital is fundamentally better. There is less interference from hissing turntable rumble etc better stereo channel separation and have no variation in playback speed. Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy.

There s another far superior reason why vinyl is better than lossy digital formats. Maybe it was coincidence but vinyl began its resurgence at around the same time as recordings started this trend. In some ways it s the audio equivalent of driving a ford pilot. Playing audio files is gigantically more convenient than playing an lp digital converter technology is getting better every year and high resolution files are clearer than the best lps.

Original sound is analog by definition. The quality of a digital reproduction is dictated by how many of those samples of the original are made. These purists wonder if digital files can really give you that analog sound of our youth. Vinyl for the most part avoided the loudness war with the rise of digital music cds included it s possible to make a track sound louder than it naturally should.

The problem here is that it had a tremendous result on the audio quality. By every measure digital audio is superior to analog. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. The vinyl lp is a format based on technology that hasn t evolved much over the last six decades.

Sound quality from a technical standpoint digital cd audio quality is clearly superior to vinyl. Sonically vinyl has both strengths. Cds have a better signal to noise ratio i e. Even the standard redbook cd 44khz 16 bit resolution has about a 26db advantage to vinyl with respect to dynamic range and at least a 40 50 db advantage in stereo separation as well as unmeasurable wow and flutter.

Lots of audiophiles say that when it comes to sound quality nothing beats vinyl. 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 wasn t long before vinyl recordings of the same content often had better sound quality at normal listening volumes simply because they had higher dynamic range.