My brother once displayed this by queuing up the same song on Spotify and on a new vinyl pressing. He began the digital version and cut to the vinyl about a minute in, and it was like going from black-and-white TV to color.
I read that he said, “Listening to digital music is like taking a shower with ice cubes.”
sound. Digital recording methods provide more technically accurate sound reproduction with greater tonal depth. Digital audio playback, in essence, can perfectly reproduce this without any degradation or loss of fidelity.
The problem with digital, is that it is often highly compressed. To wit, the songs you hear on Spotify or even iTunes downloads are highly compressed from their original recordings to make the files smaller. Even CDs are compressed somewhat (though far less than mp3/aac files). For example, most digital recordings are done at 192 khz and 24 bit depth. CDs max out at 44.1 khz and 16 bits. MP3s/AAC/are far below this, with streaming even further below.
Usually, when people say that analog vinyl produces "richer" or "fuller" sound, what people are hearing is actually analog noise that "thickens" the sound but is further from the original sound source (similar to how pumping the bass can make a song sound "better" but is not necessarily accurate).
They sound much better than Spotify and are immensely more practical than vinyl.
have "the ear" to discern great sound over very good sound, doesn't it still come down to quality of your sound system?
Listening to music on cheap ear buds is probably just as bad as an old rusty turntable.
Just as you can get excellent turntables, I suppose you can get very fine CD or MP3 equipment. I wouldn't know either way.
The practicality of CDs is quite true.
...inherent; the technology exists to digitally reproduce sound in far, far higher quality than what we get on even the best vinyl recordings.
The difference is largely based on choice made in the engineering. Back in the days of vinyl, "high fidelity" was a goal often met because the producers wanted to provide their audiences with a great sound experience. The best productions were traditionally in the classical repertory, but things also got much better through the 60s and into the 70s for jazz and pop music. Some of my favorite sonic memories of the late 70s and early 80s are listening to quadraphonic recordings on Columbia Records of, for example, Pierre Boulez conducting the New York Philharmonic in Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra over at the apartment of a friend who had super high-end equipment (preamp, amp, speakers, and of course turntable/stylus); listening to it this way probably just about maximized the expectations of the producers and engineers of that recording.
The producers and engineers for Spotify know that much of their music is being heard over tiny, low-to-medium quality ear buds or at best (for the most part) decent but still not super high-end speakers made by companies such as Bose (which I have here in my office, for example). Thus they match the production to the lowered expectations of most of their listeners.
But it is not really a case of better or worse. It is just different and highly subjective.
The link has a very good description from a technical standpoint.
...The superiority of an analog mode, vinyl, to a digital mode, Spotify, cited upwards in this thread is not based on analog being inherently better than digital, because that's not the case.
I suppose "better or worse" could be supported, but it would have to be on some quantitative basis: which system can better replicate the sound you hear live?
One thing that the writer, who has presented a nice basic explanation of recorded sound, does not get into is the difference between lossless and lossy compression, which is right at the heart of digital sound quality. See link for one brief discussion.
EDIT: After posting this I read Duke Camaro's post, which is exactly on point.
are so many variables.
My comments are based on discussions with my father you was a sound engineer early in his career which are confirmed in the article I attached . Digital chops analog and averages. However he felt the best format was tape but there are conditions there as well. A 1/4 < 2" tape etc. Recording speed is important as well higher speed recording and playback > lower speed.
In the end there are so many factors such as equipment quality both recording and playback, even playback environment. There are concert halls for a reason.
I have enjoyed the conversation
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...I went back and re-read the math PhD's article. I wasn't a math major, so beware of the following! The digital approach is indeed a sampling, so kind of an average, but the phenomenon is more like integration, where the number of divisions is made smaller and smaller to approximate the smooth curve of whatever function you're dealing with.
There are graphic comparisons of analog to digital that could be quite misleading, like this one:
One sine-wave period corresponds to the stated frequency; if we're talking about A 440 (the note A on a piano above middle C), then one period of the sinusoidal wave form is considered to represent 440 hertz. The highest note on a conventional acoustic piano, C8, has a frequency of about 4200 Hz (in equal temperament).
So going back to that image above, if one period is for A 440, the period last for 1/440 of a second. The graphic image shows about a dozen divisions, so about 440 x 12 = 5,280 components per second. But sampling rates are commonly over 50,000 Hz, meaning 50,000 components per second. So imagine those 12 boxes in the image each sliced into about 10 narrower pieces.
Current digital technology samples the sound data at rates far above the ability of the human ear to hear (about 20,000 Hz). In live music, the sounds combine pure tones into a complex tangle with harmonics reaching well above what our ears can hear. It would be interesting to take recordings done on wide-track tape recorded and played back at high speed to digital recordings at, say 96,000 Hz and ask people with experienced ears to compare. Not to mention--digital recording still often uses analog components; e.g., "digital" microphones with diaphragms, etc.
Sound reproduction is a fascinating field. A few years ago I valued the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Chicago, and was given a mini-lecture on and demonstration of their outdoor sound system, which serves people seated up front and then sitting on a lawn that extends several hundred feet back and away from the stage. They fashioned a system with delayed sound reinforcement using LARES technology, so that the sound from the speakers, wherever they are placed, arrives at the auditor close to the same time as the actual sound from the stage. See link for a little story about that.