Why analogue (vinyl) sounds better that digital

Why analogue (vinyl) sounds better than digital

A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs and DVDs are digital recordings. Take a look at the graph below. Original sound is analog by definition. A digital recording takes snapshots of the analog signal at a certain rate (for CDs it is 44,100 times per second) and measures each snapshot with a certain accuracy (for CDs it is 16-bit, which means the value must be one of 65,536 possible values).

analoguevsdigital.gif

This means that, by definition, a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave. It is approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds that have very quick transitions, such as a drum beat or a trumpet's tone, will be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.

In your home stereo the CD or DVD player takes this digital recording and converts it to an analog signal, which is fed to your amplifier. The amplifier then raises the voltage of the signal to a level powerful enough to drive your speaker.

A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost. The output of a record player is analog. It can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.

This means that the waveforms from a vinyl recording can be much more accurate, and that can be heard in the richness of the sound. But there is a downside, any specks of dust or damage to the disc can be heard as noise or static. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't degrade over time, and if the digital recording contains silence, then there will be no noise.

From the graph above you can see that CD quality audio does not do a very good job of replicating the original signal. The main ways to improve the quality of a digital recording are to increase the sampling rate and to increase the accuracy of the sampling.

An enlightening post Cyrus. It’s been years since I’ve last heard vinyl music. It must be quite taxing to take care of vinyl’s here in Mumbai where dust pollution is quite high/prevalent.

Thanx to Cyrus for MOTIVATION
I still listen to vinyl. It sounds different. All vinyls doesn't sound good, it depends on vinyl pressing (recording on vinyl)
Maintaining vinyl is very toughf in todays dusty condition.
I wash vinyl with mild soap before i play, so that keeps static and dust
at bay. But i still enjoy ABBA, Boney M, Dire Straits and Lipps Inc on vinyl,
it sounds clean and warm.