The Truth About Vinyl - Vinyl vs. Digital

What about dynamic range?

For me, sh*tty high-end is what makes the physical space required not worth it. I totally understand the love of cover art and liner notes, and the nostalgia, or mind bending reminder that the pre digital age inventions, were also —absolute genius. They're big, vulnerable to heat, heavy, and smelly. I don't like the smell of books either. I'm amused by this charming hobby of those who love it. Keep on keeping the past alive. We're only able to appreciate who we are because of the ability to observe our past. Music gives us commonality— a connection to each other outside of work or family.

I remember being a .flac snob on /mu/. I listened to this extremely high quality digital audio on 20 euro headphones. Those were the days

Most vinyl masters are created from digital files. They sound different from their digital file or CD copies because those are often mastered differently (the compression mentioned). Furthermore, digital home equipment (streamers and DACS) suffer from tiny disturbances in the electric signal that represents the bits of the digital music file, which in turn leads to small timing errors in the digital to analogue conversion stage. Vinyl, in turn, has never a perfect stereo channel separation, as digital has by nature. All factors lead us to perceive the sound differently. The so called 'superiority' debate is as such kind of futile. Neither chains from recording to reproduction are flawless, each has specific obstacles. Just choose whatever you enjoy most, or which fits the moment.

I like vinyl because it makes me look like an aficionado.

I think digital is forever you can play ssd for ages and it will not degrade

One good thing about vynyl is that it limits the amount of music available. Can anyone name a good double album (LP)? 50 years ago, the crap would've ended up in the bin. Now it's published.

Music doesn't sound better on vinyl. But it doesn't sound worse, either.
Vinyl, however, gives you a something you can hold in your hands and watch as it turns. There's just an undefinable vibe to playing music on such a classic format as vinyl.

In a blind test, I doubt anyone would be able to distinguish sound quality from vinyl, to 8-track, to cassette, to CD, to streaming.

If you're new to audio, don't bother getting into vinyl. A decent turntable and cartridge will cost you $1000 at least. Those who get serious about listening to vinyl often end up spending $3000 and much more on a table and cartridge. And of course now you get into comparing phono preamps, and the sky is the limit on that as well. And then new records are $20 each. For that you get about a dozen tracks at most. It's quite common for vinyl collectors to build collections of 1000 to 3000 records.

And then there's the problems inherent in vinyl playback. Over time, records can accumulate gunk and crud in the grooves, which can gum up the stylus. Many collectors will drop $800 and much more on a record cleaner. Now you're also spending money on cleaning supplies, as well as the time and trouble to clean your records. And with all this, you're still going to encounter records that skip and pop.

On the other hand, you can subscribe to a hi-res digital service, with millions of tracks in every genre, for less than $20/month. I own about a dozen recordings in both vinyl and digital. They do sound different and there are things I like about each that are better than the other, but there is nothing about vinyl that makes me want to abandon digital. The differences are real, but not gigantic.

Spend your money on better speakers.

music is recorded in digital at the studio---say no more

of course digital is better, but vynal is just a fun caveman technology to play with.

Digital recording has more clarity and low noise due to easier processing and manipulation of signal by the help of computers but if you really want a natural signal, it is the analog signal that is the faithful record and imprint of the true authentic sound. If you have a sensitive and critical hearing you will notice what is a natural wave and a smoothened digital binary pulses :-)

I've figured out that when a music track is made with poor quality, using better playback gear doesn't really make it sound better. It's surprising that some MP3 tracks actually sound quite good. Even if we could somehow eliminate poorly made music tracks (though this is probably unlikely), it's a chance that using higher sampling rates for creating and playing music might make it sound better, and this is supported by technical evidence. Maybe "upsampling" a badly recorded MP3 from 44.1kHz to 192kHz strokes the ego, but it clearly doesn't improve how we actually hear it.
Back in the late nineties, most 44.1 interfaces were considered perfect from a scientific and technical standpoint, but they turned out to sound like crap. However, there has been a lot of progress in improving audio interfaces, equipment for playing music, class D amplifiers, and making speakers. Still, there are a lot of music tracks out there that don't sound great despite these improvements today.

Vinyl, nothing wrong, but Digital is another galaxy

Some years ago a friend and I had this same discussion. We worked in the engineering lab with all kinds of test equipment and decided to evaluate some of our sound equipment. One of the things we found was that the ANALOG filtering of the D to A conversion process was hit or miss. The most startling was that a true LCR filter would behave as expected. ( As long as good non ceramic capacitors were used.) However, almost every active filter we tested had a problem: First, they would all pass their spec. with single sine waves unless their input amplitude was exceeded. Adding another frequency caused intermodulation distortion above some input level depending on the filter and the frequencies. Some filters could only handle low input levels before the audio "tone" changed. We could hear the distortion some were complaining about. This distortion increased slowly with amplitude. It turned out that the op amps in the filters were slew rate limiting with the multi tone inputs. The distortion was not like clipping, but was much "softer". Through my engineering car rear I Had occasion to specify and design with hi end op amps and saw vast improvements in specification. Today, if the device is selected carefully from the specifications on the data sheet and TESTED IN CIRCUIT under realistic conditions the problems we saw no longer apply.

To be more impartial, you should also include in the discussion the quality of digital to analog (DAC) converters. These have a very big impact on the fidelity of the audio when playing digital media, with low end consumer products sounding hash compared to a high quality turn table.

You also need to add in factors in digital reproduction in the home market.

With Digital to analog conversion where you have an issue with things like time smearing where filters are used to tackle this in conversation and these filters mostly effect the mid frequencies where we as humans hear best.
With analog the filters on these mid frequencies are not as effected my steep mid frequency filter curves.

With home systems you don’t tend to have high end DACs even when shelling out a lot of money.

A 16bit CD was supposed to capture audio beyond that of human hearing yet when audio formats increase in bit depths and hertz etc we can hear an improvement.
Part of this is because as the range increases the filter curves etc become less steep and have less of a negative effect.

Even with professional DACs you had a lot that had a terrible soundscape sounding wide but very flat like cardboard.

Even today recording on high end tape has some advantages such as natural tape compression that when recording boost certain frequencies where digital doesn’t.

I recently watch a video of somebody recording a kick drum both digitally and on tape.

The tape sounded better because it naturally compressed the kick boosting frequencies to allow you to hear it better and could clearly hear more of the kick than you could on the digital.

Sure you can use digital programming to add compression after but in general dedicated hardware in the change gives better results and tape compression n my opinion is more of of those things I think gives better results.

Theirs so many factors with both.

Informative video, thank you. However I don't think you highlighted enough the fact that digital music does not often arrive (or is even available) in Wave so is commonly sold to consumers in MP3 format which is drastically compressed (= lower quality) even in the best available (320kbps) vs 1411kbps for Wave. To the naked ear 320 still sounds good though but I think your video may've slightly misled a 'joe bloggs' viewer into thinking vinyl vs digital are always the same.

There absolutely is a discernable difference. A plastic disc is a dust magnet. To get rid of dust, you'd have to wash the disc with distilled water and play it in a clean room. Notice now the the playback head makes large amplitude swings up and down because the record isn't completely flat and from vibrations of the motor. This creates a rumble mainly in the difference channel encoded in the vertical modulation. On headphones it sounds like wind blowing into your ears and out the other side.

I do like how old recordings have juicy distorted bass that sounds better on small speakers. Objectively it is an artifact. And you could record the same signal coming off vinyl on digital.

Most vinyl today starts out digital anyway. I don't see why they couldn't record a compressed wave onto vinyl as long as it doesn't contain excessively loud treble. Some loudness war music is quite dull. If the assembly can track the loudest portion, it would have no problems doing it for the duration of the entire record.

And Now we have even more advanced digital format than CD:; DTS HD 96 , DTS HD MA ( 3d object based sound) and also 3d object based Atmos music that can put specific positions of instruments/voices on the sound stage, also the environment presence (concert hall , free air near a forest sound bouncing effect, the public reaction) will be reproduced logically.
I have Nirvana in DTS HD MA 5.1 with object based ( front stage arrangement sound system, active 5.1.2) and i think nothing compares with object based music...

I also have turntable, cd player and casette tape.

I got to the part four and a half minutes in where you think the coil is located in the tonearm balance weight then knew for sure you have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

There are also enjoyments in the imperfections of vinyl

Sorry but did he leave out the quality of sound stored like within spotify and the need for a good DAC?

music is analog try to make a good violin with electronic...good luck... it's mechanical like a piano no synthesizer sound like a real piano so vinyl is also mechanical (direct contact) for me it's more real than digital the only digital format i like is DSD...

Go to any of the HiFi equipment show, that feature components of staggering cost, and you’ll find that the preferred demonstrated signal is analog, either phonograph or reel to reel. Why is that? Digital certainly has enhanced clarity. But it is not as pleasing to the ear, especially over expensive equipment. And the folks who are pushing the vinyl revival are young, with much better hearing than their boomer forebears. A case can be made that the “smearing effect” of analog methods adds a very pleasing distortion, or at least alteration. That’s possible. Personally, I would note that today’s digital is captured by Fast Fourier transform, which is the most primitive digital storage. The hair cells floating in fluid stimulated by the ear drum produce complex wave interference patterns, which is the basis for holographic transforms. Still too expensive for general use, I predict someday this will become the tech of choice.

but i still hear sounds over 20 khz..... and analog music is better beacouse it is smoother and sounds more relastic..

The fact that thousands of records are not on digital or is never re released . I collect swedish prog. In this genre very few albums has been reissued

This is an appallingly bad explanation of how a vinyl record player works! This explanation does your channel no good: as a result of this single video, no real engineer will take your other videos seriously. After 4min35 I had enough (really bad, that explanation there), so I didn't even see how you probably also managed to completely miss the points on digital audio. Please don't distribute videos on topics you apparently have no idea what you're talking about.

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I thought the digital format was the problem for almost 40 years and then I learned about DACS. I have once again been enjoying music with all the emotional impact that was missing from digital ever since I purchased the Denefrips Ares II Dac. I have come to realize the problem with digital wasn't the format; the problem was terrible DACS.

really good video, well explained and honest ♥

You cannot have infinite amount of information between two finite and fixed points

that argument was from 1949? cmon

is not whether or not one sounds clearer than other. digital (ie compact disc) will always sound clearer. its the loss, the compression you get when you digitize something. with digital you’re losing a percentage of the music. also with digital, you’re listening to a computerized version of said music.

This is assuming that the music the average person is streaming digitally is not compressed at all. Which in reality, anything you listen to on Apple Music, Amazon music, or Spotify (Spotify is the closest you can get to fully non compressed), is all compressed slightly. So, the average person will notice a difference between digital and analog :)

I absolutely love collecting vinyl and collecting CDs going to record stores and looking around and talking to experts who know their music very well and I can recommend me a great artist of the same genre I love vinyl and CDs and cassettes and I will always do that and I love box that’s in super Deluxe Edition there’s something wonderful about opening up a new vinyl LP or CD or cassette to hold the music in my hand them to listen to it from beginning to end is great.

You don't have to buy needles for a CD.

The problem with vinyl is surface noise... pops, clicks, warps, hiss, S/N

What people like about vinyl is a smooth sweet sound that the cartridge picks up moving through the grooves. In essence if you listen to the gaps between songs, there is a pleasing whooshing sound that is also happening in the music grooves. Next time you play a record look for it.

Stats say over 50% of vinyl purchased today is owned by people who don't even own or use turntables. They collect them and keep them unopened. Moderm day digital files and cds are superior in clarity, sound range, and dynamics.

I 'converted' to the CD, now lossless streaming, in the 80's and never looked back. Dumped all my vinyl. In the span of decades thereafter buying new CD's and rebuying my old vinyl on CD when re-released. Now i have CD's nor vinyl and i'm in heaven.
The first time i heard one of my favorite pieces on CD without the ticks and spatters of vinyl was a revelation. You should have mentioned this aspect of vinyl. And it only gets worse after time. Diamond on plastic, what do you expect? I don't understand why any music lover would want to go back to that. And of course the inconvenience, vulnerability, space usage. A turntable..., the horror.

Vinyl has a soul

Our ears biologically cannot "sample" and "convert" that many waves, hence that's my take on why vinyls as a format comes across as more natural, nuances and flavour, vs a high fidelity high resolutions digital recordings. And even this too is subject to how much more digital data reproduction can be warped by processing and coloring, e.g. mastering, remastering, whereas the vinyl reproduction is more straightforward.

i can notice the difference on FLAC and WAV and i´m not gonna notice the analog to digital differences? bruh, and yes, wav and flac have their differences but the are "imperfections" differences, you can notice the goods and bads things that a song has when recording the pop ups and weird noices of imperfection, thats the big difference between FLAC and WAV/AIFF formats

Nostalgia, art, tactile pleasure. Much the same reason for the continued popularity of printed books.

it good enough for starcraft cut scenes it's good enough for me.