A dangerous topic: What sounds better, CD or vinyl? Well…
Global News
Ever since the CD was introduced in 1982, there's been a war about which sounds better: the compact disc or vinyl records. Who's right? You might not like the answer.
Does vinyl really sound better than a compact disc? This is a debate that is not only very scientific but also very emotional. To explain this is very difficult because the appreciation of audio quality is a very, very subjective thing that involves everything from your emotional state to the health of your ears. But I’m going to try.
If we look at things from a technical standpoint, the audio from a CD is far superior to what we get from vinyl. Again, I said, “From a technical standpoint.” Please hear me out.
The compact disc offers a better signal-to-noise ratio. Rumble — that low-frequency noise that’s not part of the music and is created by the stylus running through the grooves of a record as well as vibration from the turntable motor — is pretty much non-existent with a CD. Because it’s played with a laser, nothing ever touches the disc. And while there is a certain amount of noise from the CD player’s motor, it’s very, very quiet.
Vinyl is also prone to pops from static electricity and clicks from flaws in the surface of the record. And if you talk to engineers, they will tell you that most human ears cannot sense the fact that the digital signal of a CD is broken down into 44,100 segments per second. CDs also use something called “anti-aliasing,” which is supposed to smooth out that tiny jaggedness and (theoretically) non-continuous stream of the digital signal.
Without getting too deep into the weeds, the bottom line is that a signal sampled at 44,100 times per second is indistinguishable by our ears and brain from the same signal delivered by a smooth analogue one. This sampling rate theory was first discussed in a paper printed in 1928 and then proven experimentally in 1949.
Music from a CD should sound the same as music played from a vinyl record. However, vinyl delivers audio in a smooth analogue way with no jaggedness whatsoever. And yes, a properly recorded and manufactured vinyl record can seem to sound warmer and more pleasant. But that has more to do with how the recording was made and mastered — how it was created and prepared — before it was transferred to plastic.
Let’s look at the act and process of transferring music to vinyl, as vinyl has some inherent drawbacks that cannot be overcome.
Music is essentially data. Vinyl is limited in how much data it can store.