Why Nothing Sounds As Good As Vinyl

Why cds may actually sound better than vinyl chris kornelis january 27 2015 james russell s mother told him that his first invention was the automated battleship he built when he was 6.

Why nothing sounds as good as vinyl. Besides that vinyl records have an underlying hiss generated by the needle moving over the surface. Budget and good system matching are obvious influences on how both your cds and vinyl will sound but maybe even more so with the latter it s the little things that count. Coloured vinyl can sound as good as regular black in my opinion there are exceptions to this rule though. There s basically nothing you can do to make an hour long album on one record sound good gonsalves said.

Setting a turntable up properly for a start setting the correct tracking weight making sure it s level having the correct cartridge and good support is paramount. Hipsters and true audiophiles alike are quickly starting a new age vinylphile scene largely because of a small but noisy backlash against digitally distributed music. Why vinyl sounds better than cd. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings.

On a theoretical level there s just no reason it should be the case that vinyl sounds better. This phenomenon isn t new the anti digital audio movement was alive and well. Lots of audiophiles say that when it comes to sound quality nothing beats vinyl. There are built in problems with using vinyl as a data encoding mechanisms that have no cd equivalent.

The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. I own a couple of split colour records were you can hear a slight but audible increase in background hiss as the stylus passes from one colour to the next but it s minor and really only. A few exceptions exist. Glow in the dark vinyl for example is usually noisy.

Take a look at the graph below. Cds are not affected by surface noise because they use light beams to read the musical data which ignore any foreign substance on the disc. These purists wonder if digital files can really give you that analog sound. Very few additives can be mixed into clear vinyl without jeopardizing the opacity which means there is a potential for worse sound quality albeit this drop is often imperceptible to the common listener.

Vinyl s capable of a lot but only if the grooves are wide enough for the needle to.