Why Vinyl Is Better Sound

Digital got its act together but not until the death of the cd.

Why vinyl is better sound.

A longer album means skinnier grooves a quieter sound and more noise. Analog tape and lps aren t perfect we like them for their sound. The pressings are made straight from the masters and contain all of the detail the artist intended. Why vinyl sounds better than cd or not according to rolling stone magazine sales of vinyl albums continue to grow setting a new record in 2010.

Vinyl is a lossless format. While coloured vinyl and picture discs are an easy way to ensure degradation to a record s playback there are practices made to better the way an lp sounds. For comparison listening to vinyl as opposed to digital is like viewing the mona lisa with your own eyes rather than looking at a picture of it on a smartphone. Maybe it was coincidence but vinyl began its resurgence at around the same time as recordings started this trend.

If a song is recorded on tape its conversion to vinyl better preserves the original sound of the song. Vinyl sounds better than mp3s ever could. It s for this reason that vinyl sounds better than digital. Vinyl s capable of a lot but only if the grooves are wide enough for the needle to track them properly.

The simplest is to make a record that plays faster. Most of the music is broadcast in some lossy format where details are missed and the overall quality is reduced. The music floats within the middle range of pitches which is comfortable for humans to listen to. It happens because audio files get compressed to make them small enough to store thousands of them on the phone and to stream online.

Some listeners honestly feel that the defects vinyl introduces somehow make it more attractive or warmer but from any objective standpoint there s no justification in calling. No one s arguing that turntables are more accurate than digital audio just that vinyl aficionados love the sound of their records. It wasn t long before vinyl recordings of the same content often had better sound quality at normal listening volumes simply because they had higher dynamic range.