Vinyl discs wear out over time. They scratch easily. They crackle. They can’t reproduce frequencies as low or as high as CDs can. They have a much higher noise floor than CDs, offering both a reduced dynamic range and noisier recordings.
So why do I still listen to most of my music at home on vinyl?
Traditional reasons given for vinyl sounding better
It’s often said that it sounds more ‘organic’ because being analogue, it’s a continuous signal rather than 44,100 samples a second. That human perception can’t differentiate between 44,100 samples per second and a continuous signal is neither here nor there.
Nostalgia often comes into play, but that doesn’t explain the popularity of the format amongst younger listeners who didn’t grow up with it. What does ring true is that in a world of disposable digital files, and utilitarian CDs (that just end up getting ripped anyway), a record is a beautiful object. And the act of putting the needle down is far more satisfying than double clicking.
Finally there’s that mythical analogue ‘warmth’. There is some truth to this, I often use tubes and transformers to add life to digital recordings, but we’re talking about miniscule amounts compared to what vinyl does. That ‘warmth’ is really distortion being added. And when I’ve already done that in a controlled way, why would I want the playback format to mess with the finished product?
The real reasons people prefer vinyl
My contention is that the real reason people prefer vinyl is because of the role of DACs (digital to analogue converters) and the different approach to mastering for vinyl.
Most people don’t realize it, but the DAC is the cornerstone of a digital reproduction system. It’s the little box that converts bits into current — 1s and 0s into positive and negative charge. Cheap DACs can cause all manner of problems (usually related to a phenomenon known as jitter). The primary symptoms are a lack of depth, solidity and a smearing of the stereo image.
Being analogue, vinyl doesn’t have to go through this conversion process. And oddly enough, people often say vinyl has more depth and solidity; the same depth and solidity that you get from a high-end DAC (the one I listen through in my mastering studio cost around £900, compared to whatever’s sitting inside the £100 CD player in my living room.)
Vinyl is also a different medium to master for. For digital media — CDs and mp3s — there is an absolute ceiling of 0dB. Most modern recordings are mastered to reach this ceiling, often barely coming down from it (certainly in David Guetta’s case). Despite having much more dynamic range available to us, outside of classical and jazz, not many engineers use it (you may have heard of the ‘loudness wars’).
On vinyl, there is no absolute ceiling. The level is set by the cutting engineer. Rather than chopping off the highest peaks with the use of brickwall limiters, they are gently saturated — such is the nature of analogue. As record players aren’t portable, and don’t have a shuffle mode, it’s assumed that vinyl listeners don’t mind using their volume knob as much, so the need for the recording to be as loud as everything else is removed — allowing greater use of dynamic range. Bottom line, the source material is often actually better.
If home listeners were to hear the digital vinyl pre-masters through a competent DAC, I don’t know that anyone really would think vinyl sounded better.
I completely and utterly agree with this.
It is indeed down to the source. As the article states, most CD masterings are rubbish. There are some websites and productions (Check out Nordic Sound, they have 24-bit 96khz samples for download in .FLAC or .WAV on their site)
and when you play these songs through a competent DAC with decent speakers or phones, you will be blown away. Crazy dynamic range and fidelity without a single hiss or pop or marginal to no noticeable background noise.
And you don’t even need 96,000 samples. That’s just overkill. And people who take 196 seriously are crazy.
So yeah, digital audio is capable of sounding far better if people would just utilize its potential. When I was at a party the other day the DJ was using Vinyl and we were doing Karaoke and the first song I requested was ‘scratched’. And he had to spend much time looking for them.
If he’d only use computer software and store his songs as files he could access his songs very very quickly on the computer, there’s very very low chance they will corrupt, he can add digital EQ if needed, and nobody is going to tell the difference in the noisy room.
The answer to this age-old (well, the age of the first CD player anyway) argument among audiophiles is far more simple than the above explanation.
I’ve worked on (repair and restoration of) high-end audio equipment for years now. The reason vinyl is perceived as “better” than CD does indeed lie in the DAC, but the reasons listed above are minor compared to the real issue: The inversion of the polarity of the signal.
Some people mistakenly call this “phase inversion”, but that is an argument for another time. Unless someone makes a mistake installing the cartridge, turntables do not invert the polarity of the signal. As long as the rest of the amplifier/speaker combination is set up or built correctly, the signal is presented in the correct, natural polarity.
I have yet to run across ANY CD player/DAC that DIDN’T invert the polarity of the signal, even the $12,000 Sonic Frontiers CD player I changed the laser in once. I don’t know why this is, unless the red book specifications did it to limit the dynamic range of CD playback. You see, back then it was a common mistake for people to turn the volume up too far, because once they hit “play”, they were expecting to hear a little bit of the “hiss” of a tape or (cheap) high-gain phono preamp.
Anyhow, in defense of that Sonic Frontiers player, and a few nicer other machines as well, there is a “polarity invert” button, which in most cases corrects the polarity of the signal. Once the sound is presented to you in the correct polarity from the CD player, there is basically no perceivable difference. We’ve tested it many times, with turntables and CD players ranging from $50 to $22,000. Always the same results.
Before you call me crazy (something I will not deny actually), try this simple test: Listen to a recording using anything you like for a source. Then, immediately after, switch your speaker connectors to be “backwards”, i.e. + to – and – to +. You will most likely find that if you are using a CD player (or an iPod or computer, they all tend to invert polarity), the sound will be MUCH improved, and if you are listening to vinyl, the sound will get MUCH worse. If you find the opposite to be true, your system may have been inverting from the very beginning.
Does this go for SACD players as well? Also, could you give me the names of some less expensive players that have the “polarity invert” feature?
Is there a way to switch polarity when using headphones plugged directly into a CD player or computer?
If recorded and mastered properly it is hard to tell the difference.
I record with very high end tube gear and have done tests with many engineers who claimed the could tell the difference and almost all fail
to tell the difference.
Something I think is even more important is the use of mp3′s at 128kps being compared to vinyl. Vinyl will win ever time. There is a reason you can put 100 mp3 songs on a cd but only a quarter of them done at 44.1 at 16bit
High-end vinyl/analogue systems show their strength in their relaxed, flowing presentations. If you’re doing your comparison with high-energy dance music, with plucky fast electric bass, it doesn’t fair so well. Somehow your brain knows that analogue is more “at the moment, the way it was. Not as clean/sterile, but ultimately more soulful.