Tag: vinyl vs digital audio quality

MP3 generation: today they are young. The most famous digital music format of all time is in people’s mouths and ears, targeted by piracy, and on portable players around the world.

Meanwhile, vinyls have become relics in used bookstores and K7 tapes are left behind in the closet. In fact, it’s not surprising that many of today’s youngsters have never had the pleasure of listening to a good vinyl record on an old record player.

Digital music formats are everywhere and make the soundtrack of every user’s life. But then, do you know how to take advantage of available audio technologies or any MP3 file, regardless of quality, is a good size for your ear?

No matter your musical style, the audio quality in digital music is of great importance. Each format, each size, each file has a different quality and this directly influences how a song is heard.

Find any music CD in your drawer and put it to play on your radio. Now choose an MP3 and listen to it on your computer speakers. Did you notice the difference in noise and compression?

Quality, format and compression.

To transfer songs from an audio CD to your computer, there may be no loss of quality to your music? Quality if you use the WAV (Windows standard) or AIFF (Mac standard) format. The quality is perfect, but the size can give you a big headache: for every minute of music in WAV format, an average of 10 MB is taken up on the hard drive.

So to take up less space, use an audio file compressor like Free MP3 Converter and end up with a low quality, compressed size audio file. How does MP3 get so much smaller? The format basically removes all audio tracks that, in theory, are not perceived by the human ear, compressing instruments and layers of music.

It is as if a steamroller passes over an orchestra: the music sounds like a block of noise, which can cause hearing fatigue. The big problem is that people are so used to this mass of instruments and voice that music is at serious risk of degradation.

Bit rate (bit rate)

An encoded or decoded file is never exactly the same as the original file, as much of the information deemed superfluous is removed. In general, the lower the compression ratio, the better the quality of the file.

The term used to speak of compression is Bitrate, it consists of the average number of bits that in one second of the data will be compressed. The unit used is KBPS or 1000 BITS per second. Check the audio quality below based on the bit rate used.

We analyzed the difference and the peculiarities of both CDs and vinyl, reaching a controversial conclusion: vinyl is great, but it is not better than CD.

The return of vinyl has been celebrated around the world, it is a large format, nostalgic, but when it comes to sound quality, there are many steps behind the CD. There is no way to compare something analog with something digital. What can be discussed is the quality of the artists of today, in relation to the artists of the past.

If Led Zeppelin recorded his self-titled album today, digitally, it would be even better when it comes to sound quality. Just as if Justin Bieber recorded “Believe” in the past, similarly, it would be even worse.

In addition to vinyl and CDs, other music distribution formats are also in vogue, such as MP3.

Advantages and disadvantages of vinyl:

On vinyl, sound waves are analog, as is vinyl recording. This means that there is not much loss between recording and playback. Many claim that vinyl sound has more body and shows more detail. Since it is an analog process, the EQ naturally has more bass, making it more noticeable.

However, this does not mean that the sound is of higher quality. If the CD has a sample rate of 44 KHz at 16 bits, the vinyl would have 16 KHz at 8 bits.

Vinyl is physically limited in some way. First, in terms of “dynamic range”, which in the case of vinyl is extremely limited.

(Note: Dynamic Range is the difference between the highest note and the softest note.)

And secondly, in terms of “frequency”, because the quality of vinyl’s frequency is not universal, it is variable.

The sound of vinyl sounds better on songs with lower notes, because if the notes of the songs are too high, the needle has difficulty following / playing, which contributes to significant distortions in the sound of the songs. For example, try listening to the letters, whose consonants (s, z, etc.) are sung sharply, the distortion will be clear.

Because they have more groove and clearer, cleaner bass, the vinyl is a favorite for music djs.

Advantages and disadvantages of the CD:

CDs depend on sampling an analog signal, as well as having some limitations regarding the “frequency” element. While on vinyl, encoding is done in an audio waveform, on CD, this audio sampling encoding must be captured in different ways and points, unlike vinyl, which captures it through a single point, for what cd will never be able to present the rhythm that vinyl presents, and this is one of the few advantages of analog over digital.

On the other hand, the CD has a sufficient sampling volume to sound clearer and more defined to the human ear.

The sampling rate of CDs is 44.1, which means that CD recordings can be captured up to 44,100 times per second and can capture frequencies of 20KHZ.

And this frequency is the maximum that the human ear can hear, the human ear is clear, because in the case of dogs, for example, it is still a low frequency, because they have a hearing 4 times higher than ours, and probably even listen to our breathing clearly.
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Recordings above 21 kHz, only for dogs. This does not mean that the 20 Khz reached by the cd is worthy of an outstanding frequency, no, it is not that the frequency of the cd is clearer and clearer to the human ear.

Also, in the recording studio there is no microphone to capture more than 20 Khz.

MP3:

It all depends on your compaction rate. MP3, like CDs and DVDs, captures sound waves and converts them to files. It turns out that in digital recording it is not possible to follow the “curves” of sound waves, so they are recorded with a certain interval, defined by compression. The higher the compression, the greater the range and the less nuances the recording captures.

See the figure above. The black line is the original analog sound. The blue line represents a recording with high compression, the red line with a smaller one. Note that blue does not follow sound curves as much as red.

Compaction eliminates dynamic bands that, in theory, the human ear does not hear, so the tips flatten out. In other words, an uncompressed digital file, such as WAV, will show all these curves, that is, the same quality as the CD. Today there are formats like FLAC, which have compression, but little. They are still bigger than an MP3, but much smaller than a WAV.

Therefore, it can be concluded that, in terms of sound quality, CD is really better than vinyl and MP3.

But what do people prefer?

If we consider the growth in sales of digital copies, as well as the practicality that this brings, people tend to prefer digital copies, be it MP3 or WAV.

But this is an unfair comparison, since you can’t put a CD or vinyl on the iPod and listen in the middle of the street. Today’s people are more dynamic, they live in a world where haste and practicality go together, and in this world, for them, it is important to have music available in their pocket.

It’s not for nothing that people listen to music, just listen. And the difference between listening and listening is clear. Listening is when you listen to music doing other things in parallel, and listening is paying attention only to the album you are listening to.

The music is trivialized, people listen to a song by a certain artist, and if they don’t like it, they are already making a negative judgment about the artist, without even listening to his work, all due to the rush and practicality of being able to hear everything he wants. . at any time through the internet.

And that is exactly why vinyl and CDs cannot compete with digital copying, in terms of the particular taste of most people.

Sound engineers Geringer and Dunnigan presented recordings made in analog (vinyl) and digitally designed (cd) recordings to a group of record label producers, without telling them which recordings were digital and which were analog.

The result was a massacre, since the vast majority of producers preferred digital recording, without knowing if they were voting for digital or analog recordings. Upon listening to the recordings, the producers reported that the digital recordings were of an incomparable quality infinitely superior to the quality of the analog recordings they had previously listened to.

According to them, digital recording sounded better in all aspects: treble, bass, sound quality, frequency, etc.

If the quality of the CD is higher and the MP3 allows more practicality, why do people still listen to vinyl?

Because vinyl, in addition to providing a retro, nostalgic air, is the only device that people, when they stop to listen, really listen carefully. In addition, the vinyl preserves the original recording, that is, if someone coughed or sneezed in the middle of a recording, they will continue in the recording, giving the format a visceral air and better recording than the artist can do, without resources. computerized.

When you listen to an analog recording, you hear it as it was recorded, and this is the charm of vinyl. On the contrary, in the CD, in very rare cases, the final versions are not affected by the sound editing programs.

There are countless artists today who only achieve fame and success because they record digitally. Many of today’s artists would not be able to record analogue as they do not have enough talent to record on tape without changing the recording later.

Digital recording is more accurate, but this is not the only point to consider.

To conclude, it is important to note that each format has its charms. MP3 offers greater practicality, CD has higher sound quality, while vinyl has a better rhythm.

But none of this works if your speaker or headphones aren’t good enough to play any of the 3 formats.