Vinyl Vs Streaming Quality

Still as artists and labels hop on the vinyl trend some new vinyl releases may be mastered from cd quality audio not the high resolution formats audiophiles and folks like neil young adore.

Vinyl vs streaming quality.

We compare the sound quality of analog vinyl vs digital audio cd flac on a 100k stereo setup. The results may surprise you as they did us. Abc science by james bullen. See our youtube debate.

Posted tue tuesday 21 nov november 2017 at 4 07am tue tuesday 21 nov november 2017 at 4 07am. Old lps were cut from analog tapes that s why they sound so high quality. Playback and inconsistencies though cd s sample rate is high and we re all well aware how good they sound the idea of its being converted once into digital and then back to analogue losing and approximating information seems to infer it will always be inferior to vinyl. Regardless whether you listen to music on a streaming service like apple music or prefer mp3s or even the radio you can t get the full picture of that track.

But the majority of today s new and re issued vinyl albums around 80 or more several experts estimate start from digital files even lower quality cds. To take advantage of higher quality dvd audio discs however you will need a dvd player with a 192khz 24 bit digital to analog converter. What music industry experts predict for the two platforms in 2017 what music industry experts predict for streaming and vinyl in 2017 screen shot 2017 03 17 at 14 06 22 png. Check out our listening results.

Cd quality sits somewhere in the middle with 44 100 samples per second at 16 bit accuracy. Dvd audio discs and players are rare right now but they will become more common and the difference in sound quality should be noticeable. Digital music as source for vinyl. Maybe it s not just about the audio quality.

There s very little compression so the loudest parts of those sounds often stand out like you d expect them to at a live. No audio data is lost when pressing a record. Writing for the wall street journal neil shah reported in his article why vinyl s boom is over that. A history of music sources is a history of ever evolving technology and ever lasting love of high fidelity sound.

Vinyl is far more high quality. That s why snare drums cymbal splashes and other loud instruments have so much more punch in vinyl recordings. The 2010 s has seen vinyl cds and streaming battle it out for attention. Most dvd players only have a 96khz 24 bit digital to analog converter.