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Old 06-20-2010, 01:11 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AlizéeInspired View Post
Nice. As for vinyl being dead, I have often heard that vinyl sound is actually better than CD and other digital sound.

Digital recording takes a lot of snapshots of the analog sound (natural sound). For a CD there are about 44,100 or so snapshots taken a minute. The snapshots are then converted into digital information with certain precision. For a CD recording this precision is 16 bits. Which means that every one of the 44,100 snapshots needs to be converted into one of the 65,536 possible values.

So the argument is that digital recording doesn't include all the sound information, where a record player is strictly analog and does. A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. The record player then uses this groove to make an analog sound signal which can be fed into an amplifier. So, in this process, no information can be lost. No snapshots need to be taken and the sound doesn't need be converted to one of the possible 65,536 values. There is basically an infinite number of 'snapshots' and 'possible values'. Therefore, a vinyl recording generally sounds better than a CD recording.

But as technology advances, we are able to come closer to vinyl recordings as we are capable of a much larger number of possible snapshots in a minute.


Hope you enjoy your vinyl I wish I could have ordered one, but I don't have the money at the time for that and a turntable

Good explanation!

I'll just note that it is 44,100 or so snapshots taken a second. Think of it as a measurement taken at the top and bottom of each wave of a 22 Kilohertz signal.
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Last edited by Rev; 06-20-2010 at 01:13 AM..
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