Vinyl Vs Cd Quality Science

Take a look at the graph below.

Vinyl vs cd quality science.

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. From a technical standpoint digital cd audio quality is clearly superior to vinyl. Cds are not affected by surface noise because they use light.

They sound different and that s exactly the point. Cds have a better signal to noise ratio i e. Dust particles in the grooves of an lp cause crackles and ticks that are present and audible no matter how well you clean the record. The cd always comes up technically better if you measure it with scientific.

What vinyl can t do. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate for cds it is 44 100 times per second and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy for cds it is 16 bit which means the value must be one of 65 536 possible values. A digital recording doesn t degrade overtime like a record does when played too many times. And a cd s digital storage method means the high and low frequencies don t need to be tweaked as they are on vinyl.

Playback and inconsistencies 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. Original sound is analog by definition. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. Why vinyl sounds better than cd.

Host john dankosky to talk about the science of audio and how perceptions can shape the sound experience. 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. These days many records are made using playback of a digital file so vinyl preference cannot be attributed solely to the differences in the way the sound wave is reproduced.