Do Clear Vinyls Sound Better

There s basically nothing you can do to make an hour long album on one record sound good gonsalves said.

Do clear vinyls sound better. It s also clear that the vinyl experience is about more than just sound. The more information running past the needle per second the more detailed the sound being reproduced. About 2 percent in 2014. Some listeners honestly feel that the defects vinyl introduces somehow make it more attractive or warmer but from any objective standpoint there s no justification in calling the sound of vinyl records better submit a question to ask the expert.

Is the sound on vinyl records better than on cds or dvds. Sales of vinyl records have been soaring although they still represent only a tiny fraction of the music industry s revenues. A few exceptions exist. The answer lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings.

Comparison of a raw analog audio signal to the cd audio and dvd audio output. The latter is usually preferred for an album as it means you can fit more tracks onto a single disc but it is becoming slightly more popular to favour sound over convenience especially with re issues. By doing it too much you can unintentionally add noise and artifacts into your recordings by raising the levels of certain sounds as well as cutting the loudness of individual. Vinyl s capable of a lot but only if the grooves are wide enough for the needle to track.

Pete lyman co owner and chief mastering technician at infrasonic sound an audio and vinyl mastering studio in echo park. Very few additives can be mixed into clear vinyl without jeopardizing the opacity which means there is a potential for worse sound quality albeit this drop is often imperceptible to the common listener. Clear vinyl picture discs and glow in the dark pressings are more susceptible to poor playback. So a record spinning at 45rpm will sound better than the same one built to spin at 33 1 3rpm.

Vinyl is back no doubt about it. A vinyl record is an analog recording and cds and dvds are digital recordings. Even by conventional metrics quality of the sound will tank the more you lean on this compression. Take a look at the graph below.

The practice isn t inherently a bad thing but there are tradeoffs. Cds reflect exactly what the artists recorded in the studio.