While extolling the virtues of vinyl over CD a friend of mine sent me a message on my facebook page saying that there was no way that a record could sound better than a CD. The CD is so much cleaner and it doesn't wear out over time. The music is more dynamic he says. REALLY? Well on 2 of those points I will concede, they are cleaner sounding. In quiet passages on a CD you hear nothing and I mean nothing. But, what if in those quiet passages you are supposed to hear something, maybe a singer taking a very dramatic soft breath or soft resonances of a guitar string that softly decays into the next note? Sure if you don't take care of your vinyl you may also have some unwanted hiss from dust but keep them clean and take care of the needle on your cartridge and that problem isn't such a problem. He is right, records do wear out, that is a point I can't argue but the reality is that it takes thousands of plays for a record to wear out and I have indeed worn out records, few but I have worn some out. That brings us to his point of CDs being more dynamic. I scoff at this because simple physics tells us that this is impossible and the human ear can attest to it.
Now, about this dynamic thing. Let us first take a look at the facts of a CD. A digital signal chops up an analog signal into parts at 44,100 times per second. It looks at each part to make sure that everything is the same. CDs use 16 bit so each of those digital chops has to be one out of 65,536 (simple math here). So that right there tells us that a digital recording isn't actually capturing the sound wave as originally played. Don't believe me? Listen to Pink Floyd's Time and take a listen to the drums on vinyl then the CD, you would be hard pressed to think that the CD is capturing the full tone of the drums. Listen to Spyro Gyro's Morning Dance, same thing. You lose so much of the steel drum that all you are left with is a high pitched mass of mess. The vinyl recording you can hear the tone of the steel drum and the decay of each note but I digress.
A vinyl record is different, very different. Each groove on a record is cut as an exact wave form of the original sound wave from the instrument or vocal. If the microphone can pick it up it is cut into the original wax recording. There is no chopping of the signal at all. One thing that people often say when listening to vinyl after not hearing it for many years is how much more lifelike the music sounds. How much fuller the tone is and how much more natural the bass is. It is because the signal isn't being compared to a bit rate, the turntable is simply reproducing the note as the original wave form was recorded.
DVD actually is getting closer to almost half of what music actually sounds like and well, it is a step in the right direction but even at 24 bit and a sampling rate of 193kHz it is still very very far off. If you do the simple math, that is about 16,777,216 tiny little chops of information. Still not really close to the actual sound wave.
In the end, it comes down to whether you want your music exactly as it was recorded or if you are satisfied with something close. I prefer mine as recorded and apparently a lot of bands and musicians like their music as close to the original recording as well as more and more are releasing their new music on vinyl again. Death Cab For Cutie, Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Matt Costa, the Cars and Forever The Sickest Kids have recently released their new albums on vinyl. Turntables, cartridges and needles haven't changed much in the past 50 years or so but the means by which bands master their music in the studio have and some of those changes do make a record sound more dynamic. People laugh at me but I say that John Mayer's Room For Squares is one of the best sounding records that I have ever bought. The bass on that record at lower volumes vibrates things on my desk across the room, you can actually hear the sweet decay each time the drummer hits his hi hat, you can actually hear the tone in each of the guitar strings and you can hear every breath that he takes before he sings. Almost all of that is lost on CD, I know, I've played one over the other switching back and forth between CD and vinyl. I'll offer this. Play Why Georgia and pay particular attention to the acoustic guitar. Can you hear the woody resonance sound of the body of the guitar at the same time as hearing the tone in the strings? Can you hear bass guitar coupling with the bass drum as separate instruments or does it sound like the bass drum and bass guitar are the same. These are the details that are lost in the age of digital. Compression is well, compressing the music and compression is never a good thing.
So that is my explanation of the difference between a CD and vinyl. Oh, and don't even get me started on downloads.
Here are some new records that I think are worth the money.
John Mayer - No Room For Squares (every record collection should have this for the pure dynamics)
Matt Costa - Songs We Sing
The Cars - Move Like This
Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys
Stereophonic - Decade In The Sun
Beck - Guerolito
G. Love - Fixin To Die
Forever The Sickest Kids - Forever The Sickest Kids (This record will shake your house apart!)
Paul Simon - So Beautiful or So What. (of course if you are Paul Simon with limitless resources you will be able to make the best sounding vinyl. This album is a must!)
Rufus Wainwright - All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu
R.E.M. - Chronic Town
Force Family 5 - Dance or Die (my daughter came home from the Creation Festival with this one and while I'm not a big fan of the band itself, just not by style of music. The record is recorded as well as any that I have heard in a long time.)
So there ya go!
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