Comparing compact discs cds to vinyl or gramophone records is the musical equivalent of comparing digital photography with film photography.
Vinyl vs cd vs digital.
There s another far superior reason why vinyl is better than lossy digital formats.
In this video you can hear the real difference between a cd and a vinyl.
Though cd s sample rate is high and we re all well aware how good they sound the idea of its being converted once into digital and then back to analogue losing and approximating information seems to infer it will always be inferior to vinyl.
The problem here is that it had a tremendous result on the audio quality.
Original sound is analog by definition.
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.
I can go on but you get the point.
Cd players because they use super accurate digital buffers are immune to this.
Digital got its act together but not until the death of the cd.
Digital music is the most convenient way to listen to music today whether it s obtained legally or not.
Maybe it was coincidence but vinyl began its resurgence at around the same time as recordings started this trend.
A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings.
For doing this test i recorded the same song three times with this gear.
On a cd the separation between the left and right channels used in recording is over 90 db.
Yet there seems to be a large revival of vinyl records mainly due to either the hipster crowd or nostalgics.
A digital recording doesn t degrade overtime like a record does when played too many times.
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.
Cds and vinyl records are both audio storage and playback formats based on rotating discs from different times in music history.
