Why Vinyl Records Are Better Than Digital

The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings.

Why vinyl records are better than digital.

About 2 percent in 2014. It s very much alive and is much more preferable than listening to music in a digital format. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. 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.

Sales of vinyl records have been soaring although they still represent only a tiny fraction of the music industry s revenues. Original sound is analog by definition. Playing audio files is gigantically more convenient than playing an lp digital converter technology is getting better every year and high resolution files are clearer than the best lps. Well compared to the ultra compressed mp3 files yes in some ways.

Is vinyl better than digital. Let s take a trip to a record store and i ll tell you the four reasons why 12 vinyl records are better than digital mp3. Vinyl didn t die when jimi hendrix did. Frequencies are important for vinyl because records spin at different speeds in the center than on the outside so the high frequencies need to be adjusted so the album sounds the same from start to finish.

For digital to truly eclipse vinyl thousands of records from the 1990s onward would need a remaster. Vinyl is back no doubt about it. Vinyl is one of the best ways to listen to music. Comparing compact discs cds to vinyl or gramophone records is the musical equivalent of comparing digital photography with film photography.

Vinyl records do have more personality and are not fighting to be the loudest but they are rather impractical technology has advanced to a point where we don t have to deal with our music wearing out or producing weird sounds that aren. Take a look at the graph below. Vinyl s volume is dependent on the length of its sides and depth of its grooves which means an album mastered specifically for the format may have more room to breathe than its strained digital. To many the superior sound quality and physical collection are enough to justify the investment.

Records aren t exactly known for their portability for example.