Why Vinyl Records Are Better

Before weighing vinyl s ahem good and bad sides it helps to know how records are made.

Why vinyl records are better.

Vinyl is one of the best ways to listen to music. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings. However that s not to say there aren t advantages to digital music. Why vinyl sounds better than cd or not according to rolling stone magazine sales of vinyl albums continue to grow setting a new record in 2010.

The artwork the lyrics and personal interaction are all reasons that this once dead format has catapulted back into the mainstream consciousness but when asked most people would respond that the biggest reason they love vinyl is the sound. Playing a record uses a stylus. Take a look at the graph below. By clint holley well made music it has become clear in the past five years that consumers love vinyl records.

It s very much alive and is much more preferable than listening to music in a digital format. Vinyl didn t die when jimi hendrix did. For vinyl albums you re trying to add back the technical elements that were lost when the first record was pressed. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings.

For digital to truly eclipse vinyl thousands of records from the 1990s onward would need a remaster. So no vinyl isn t better than digital music but it offers several advantages because of the fact that loudness war mixing isn t feasible on the medium. Records aren t exactly known for their portability for example. Sales of vinyl records have been soaring although they still represent only a tiny fraction of the music industry s revenues.

Analog tape and lps aren t perfect we like them for their sound as it is making them technically better doesn t always make them sound subjectively better. Comparison of a raw analog audio signal to the cd audio and dvd audio output. 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. Is the sound on vinyl records better than on cds or dvds.

To many the superior sound quality and physical collection are enough to justify the investment. About 2 percent in 2014. 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.