Listening To Vinyl Compared To Cd

Comparing compact discs cds to vinyl or gramophone records is the musical equivalent of comparing digital photography with film photography.

Listening to vinyl compared to cd.

A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. The rest of it dates back to sometime in the 1990s when the cd all but killed off vinyl in the first place. It s listening to music is an experience and a full experience includes putting on the record moving over the needle and sitting back and. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings.

Original sound is analog by definition. The cd versus vinyl debate and by extension the debate over digital versus analog sound has only grown. By 2014 vinyl s resurgence as a marketable product and fetish property appeared. As described below despite decades of arguments there is no technical proof of the sonic superiority of the vinyl medium compared to cd.

Comparison of a raw analog audio signal to the cd audio and dvd audio output. Taking both actual albums and track sales into account the equivalent of 243 5 million digital albums were sold last year compared to 165 4 million cds and 6 1 million vinyl records. However that s not the whole story. That does not mean the medium as a whole is superior.

In fact vinyl outsold cds for the first time since the 1980s according to a recently released mid year report from the. Vinyl always sounds better than cd. Take a look at the graph below. One vinyl record may sound better than its equivalent cd for extremely specific reasons.

Cds and vinyl records are both audio storage and playback formats based on rotating discs from different times in music history the cd audio is digitally encoded and read by a laser while analog vinyl audio is physically read by a needle. Why vinyl sounds better than cd.