Vinyl versus Digital recordings

I admit, i enjoy vinyl, not because it sounds "better" but because it sounds "different" to my ear, and hell yeah, some of them are really handsome to look at, can't have this on a CD or MP3:

(Credits to Techmoan, one of my favourite YT channels)

One time, some years ago, i got ridiculed by a friend because i spent 1k EUR on a pair of Klipsch speakers, because for him the pair of plastic Genius speakers were enough.

I did not even got into an argument with him, but I've asked him why is he driving a Mercedes and not a Fiat. I had the same reasoning when i bought 1k speakers over 20 EUR speakers.

But, i can understand that from his point of view, it does not matter if it's an MP3, CD or Vinyl, it really doesn't if you're not interested in such things, however i think it's a shame for poeple to not try to better themselves on occasion. I'm not saying you need to go invest 20k in your sound system, but when you're offered to chance to be shown a different system, don't say, no thanks, i would not appreciate the difference. Then you're simply deaf :)

The point of this article is about appreciating the difference, analog versus digital. Which is "better".

I think neither, or both.

That may be confusing and it should be. No matter how good or expensive your sound system is, yours is not "better" than mine. Everybody hear things differently and have different perceptions regarding sound, but neither a full analog or full digital system will ever compare to a live performance. Simply put, no matter what you do, it will never sound the same as an artist performing on the stage in a properly designed concert hall or venue.

That being said, it boils down to which one sounds "better" and why.

Some people believe that vinyl is better because it has better dynamics. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Above, you can see the grooves which were cut into a piece of material. There are several used to make records (Polyvinyl Chloride, PVC, etc) but the recording process stays the same.

Indentations are created in the grooves, which makes the needle move left and right, generating a small voltage (from 0.12-0.5mv) which then gets amplified to line level (up to 2v, typical applications are 60 do 80 dB increase, depending on the cartridge used, phono amp, etc etc) and then put through a power amplifier.

All this is analogue, there are no Ones and Zeroes involved anywhere, the overall feeling is that is as close as it gets to the original waveform.

It's not. The closes to the original, would mean that the performer, would actually use a system that will directly cut the grooves based on the sound it receives, which was the case of Thomas Edison with his wax cylinder phonograph.

In reality, the performer sings into a microphone, that captured signal is carried over thru various processing equipment, gets recorded onto a medium, then the master press is cut by specialized machinery, so there is processing involved, not digital, but not the original signal either.

However, due to mechanical constraints, namely how far you can actually move the needle from the right most to left-most position as well as the maximum groove width, with vinyl you can achieve around 60dB of Dynamic Range, which is the difference between the largest and smallest value of "something" (in reality it's more complicated than that, but read about it here)

The CD manufacturing process, follows a similar technique, once the sound is processed and recorded onto a medium, a master is created which then gets duplicated by specialized machinery.

With a CD, you can get a 96dB of dynamic range, seeing the CD is encoded in PCM (more later) at 16 bit (there are also Super Audio CD at 24 bit with more dynamic range)

MP3s, well they are not manfuactured. MP3 is a file format which contains some information which then gets decoded and played back, however it still needs some source material to begin with.

In fact, that source material is what matters, no matter the format it ends up into.

By design, MP3 compression algorithm was designed to drop audio information above 16 Khz at 128 Kbps (depending on the codec and bitrate it can go above 16 Khz), which is the higher hearing limit for most people, as well as for most consumer playback equipment. This saves space which in turn makes the files smaller and easier to store/transport, however with MP3 you can go up to 20 Khz at high bitrates (1.4 Mbit)

Most definitely, for my friend mentioned above, and not only, this is enough, because his speakers would make a mess out of things anyway so accurate reproduction does not matter.

MP3s are usually created from CD tracks, so they get the same dynamic range.

FLAC is a more versatile digital format that is not lossy, it keeps all the information that is fed into the encoder, hence it produces larger files than MP3. It can also accept input signals sampled at more than 16 bits, like 24 bit, offering 144 dB of dynamic range or even 32 bit which offers a whooping 1528 dB of dynamic range.

32 bit DNR is not useful in playback at all (some argue the usefulness of it in recording studios too) mainly because the loudest sound ever recorded on Earth (earthquake) compared to the silence of the best anechoic chamber on earth is about 210 dB. While 32 bit is useful in this instance, you probably will not listen to that ever on your system (read more here).

Going to more down to earth examples, so you can understand better, let's see common noise levels

• Your breathing - 10 dB
• A quiet urban area - 40 dB
• A car running at 100 Km/h - 70 dB
• A turbofan aircraft taking off, as heard at a 50m distance - 110 dB - this is the pain threshold for the average human
• A jet plane taking off, as heard at 25m - 150 dB - this will rupture your eardrums

So technically, you don't need full dynamic range at 24 bit either, it will hurt you if you have a system and a recording that's actually capable of delivering 144 dB of dynamic range.

Since we covered how Vinyl is cut, i should explain how digital sound is recorded onto digital mediums.

The most used technique there is Pulse Code Modulation which works by measuring the amplitude of the continuous-time input signal, at discrete intervals, hence converting that into numbers that represent a discrete signal.

To better understand this, here's an analogue signal and it's digital counterpart:

In order to accurately reproduce the original waveform, the digital sampling rate need to be fast enough to capture enough samples to allow the playback device (also known as a Digital to Analogue Converter or shortly DAC) to reproduce the waveform.

To not get into the math behind, the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem says that the sampling rate needs to be double that of the maximum frequency that needs to be reproduced, otherwise it will be impossible for the sampling device (also know as Analogue to Digital Converter or shortly ADC) to capture fast changing signals.

For a CD, this sampling rate is 44100 times per second, which equates to a maximum reproducible frequency of 22050 Hz which should be enough for accurate reproduction.

Arguably, the sample rate does impact the reproduction but not by much, maybe enough to make a solid difference for the trained ears, however this also has something to do with the quality and capability of your DAC to turn the digital samples into the equivalent analogue waveform that needs to be reproduced by the speakers. More about DACs in a future article.

Whether the digital signal is encoded on a CD, encoded to a FLAC file or to MP3, the digitization process is the same, keeping in mind that MP3 will actually cut off the frequencies above 16 Khz.

Hopefully, with all the technical details, you have a better graps of what's going on when recording sound.

What does all this mean for the Vinyl vs CD or other digital formats.

Keep in mind that most of the recording studios nowadays use digital equipment for the analogue to digital conversion, digital for mixing and digital for storing. It's more practical. Granted prestigious recording studios don't record in PCM, but in DSD (Direct Stream Digital) format, which is a subject on it's own. Suffice to say, DSD is a better method of digitalization of the master recordings.

However, to put that recording on a CD, MP3 or FLAC it still needs to be converted to PCM. To put it on vinyl, it needs to go thru an analogue cutting lathe to put the information on the vinyl master.

Now since we know from all the techno-babble above, that Vinyl has actually a lower dynamic range than the CD, it all comes down to the art of creating the final mix for the medium you want to put that recording on.

Here's where the actual magic happens, it's not the machines, it's not the digital resolution, it's about the sound technician that actually has a clue how to record and mix.

With the Loudness War (see here) which started in late 40's for the 7" jukebox records, which had to be loud, well into today, sound engineers normalize the loudness of tracks to the point where you get very little dynamic range, making the recording sound louder (obviously) but at the same time, less enjoyable.

Take for example, Metallica - Death Magnetic, released in 2008. The original CD version is normalized close to 0dBFS and sounds bad, according to a lot of critics.

Here's the reference from the Loduness War Database, and you can find more information on the album's Wikipedia page here (another good read is here), just scroll about the middle of the page, you will see the original CD version waveform compared to downloadable (official) version so you can see the differences between the normalized and non-normalized one.

I never listened to the album myself, however i have all Rammstein vinyl releases, which i bought to support the band, but never listen to, because they sound awful. All those tracks sound much better coming over Spotify than the do in Vinyl.

Don't get me wrong, i also listen to digital, there are plenty of digital recordings that sound awesome on the proper equipment, but the problem today, is the quality of music and the quality of sound, not the medium.

I tend to agree with what they say: Music sounded better when ugly people were allowed to make it


Credits:
Techmoan: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5I2hjZYiW9gZPVkvzM8_Cw
Dynamic Range DB: http://dr.loudness-war.info/
Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/